Small Steatite Cup with a Lion Protome
Unknown · Undated in the museum record
A shallow cup of pale steatite, less than ten centimetres long and barely two high, with the head of a lion carved at one end as a protome, a projecting animal forepart. Steatite, or soapstone, is soft enough to be worked with simple tools, and the carver used it to give the little vessel both a bowl and a decorative animal handle. Look at the lion's face and mane and at the smooth, polished hollow of the bowl. Other titles used for the piece call it a censer, so it may have held incense or a burning substance rather than food.
The museum records the cup as coming from Syria, without a precise site, and it was purchased in nineteen thirty-five. No date is given in the record, so its place in this room of inland Syrian antiquities rests on style and material. Stone vessels with animal protomes were made across the Near East from the third millennium BC onward, and small steatite cups and lamps are common finds in Syrian houses and sanctuaries. Whatever its exact age, the object lets you see a craftsman's pleasure in turning a practical dish into a small sculpture.
Did You Know? Steatite is so soft it can be scratched with a fingernail, which made it the ideal stone for small carved vessels like this one.
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