Small Head of a Woman Wearing a Polos
Unknown · Early Dynastic III B period, c. 2500-2340 BC
Barely six centimetres high, this head of a woman is carved from a pinkish breccia, a stone made of fragments cemented together, whose mottled surface gives the face an unusual warmth. She wears a polos, the tall cylindrical headdress seen on goddesses and elite women, and the left side of it is broken away. The eyebrows and eyes were once inlaid, and the empty sockets show how much of the expression depended on those lost pieces. At each ear two small holes were drilled to hold ornaments, probably of metal or shell. The mouth is small and set, the cheeks full.
The head was excavated in 1934 at the foot of the eastern enclosure wall of the temple of Ishtar at Mari, the great city on the middle Euphrates, in the first seasons of André Parrot's excavations. It belonged to a small statue of the kind dedicated in the sanctuary by worshippers, who left their images in stone to stand in permanent prayer before the goddess. Its scale and the coloured stone set it apart from the alabaster heads found nearby. It came to the Louvre through the partage of finds from the 1934 season.
Did You Know? Two holes at each ear show that this tiny figure wore double earrings, like the women in the shell inlays found in the same temple.
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