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Statuette of a Striding Figure
3000-2800 BCE
- Medium
- Copper
- Classification
- Religious/Ritual Object
- Dimensions
- 17.2 × 5.7 × 5.7 cm (6 3/4 × 2 1/4 × 2 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Iraq
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
- Credit line
- Anonymous loan
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Cast in solid copper and executed with a remarkable degree of sophistication, this statuette is thought to represent a supernatural being that served as an intermediary between the physical world and the spiritual realm. It depicts a muscular, bearded male wearing a headdress of goat horns and ears, a raptor skin over his shoulders, a cylindrical belt around his trim waist, and ankle boots with long, curved toes. His eyes are inlaid with bits of shell or stone; the now-missing pupils were probably made from a contrasting material. It is one of a pair of virtually identical figures (the other is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) that are unlike anything else that is known today.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
