Figurine of a Divinity with Torque and Loincloth
Unknown · Late Bronze Age, undated in the museum record
A slender standing figure in precious metal, twenty-eight centimetres tall, wearing a heavy torque around the neck and a short loincloth around the hips. The museum's title calls it a divinity, and its record describes it as a female idol; the torque and the loincloth are attributes of the gods of the Syrian Middle and Late Bronze Age, and the figure stands stiffly with the arms held close to the body. Look at the gleam of the gold surface and the way the silver adds a second tone.
The figurine was excavated at Ras Shamra, the ancient Ugarit, on the third of November nineteen thirty-two in trench one, and came to the Louvre in the division of finds with Syria. Ugarit's goldsmiths were among the finest of the Late Bronze Age, and objects of solid or gilded precious metal were normally melted down in antiquity, so its survival is exceptional. Whether it represents a god or a goddess, it shows how the people of Ugarit imagined their deities: youthful, richly adorned, and radiant in the gold that was reserved for the divine.
Did You Know? Precious-metal figures of gods were almost always melted down in later ages, which makes this survivor from Ugarit a rarity.
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