Statuette of a Dog
Unknown · c. 2100-1900 BC
A tiny silver dog, only four centimetres long, wears a collar marked with hatched lines and carries its tail in a tight curl that hangs below its hind legs. It is pierced from top to bottom, so it may have been threaded as a pendant or fixed to something with a pin. The Louvre notes that it forms a pair with another dog in the collection.
The statuette comes from Bactria and dates to around twenty one hundred to nineteen hundred BC, the period of the Oxus civilisation that produced fine gold and silver animals, seals and vessels. Dogs appear in Bactrian art as guardians and companions, and a pierced figure like this may have been worn as an amulet. The museum acquired the piece in nineteen eighty three after it was stopped at French customs, a reminder that many Bactrian objects reached the market through unofficial channels in the nineteen seventies and eighties, without recorded excavation. Its exact find spot is therefore unknown.
Did You Know? The curled tail and hatched collar are enough to suggest a well-kept pet from four thousand years ago.
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