Furniture element: human head

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This fragment belongs to a group of carved ivories, mostly furniture elements, probably found at the site of a palace at Acemhöyük in central Anatolia. Carved in the round, the piece shows a beardless human head with short but voluminous hair. The eyebrows meet in the middle above large, wide-open eyes, in which the pupils have been drilled to receive inlays in another material, now missing. The nose is prominent and the mouth is small and tight-lipped. The top of the head is flattened and drilled with a vertical hole, probably for attachment to another element. The pink staining of this piece indicates that iron oxides are present on the surface, although it is not known whether this was a deliberate decorative treatment, or a result of contact with the soil in which this and other pieces of carved ivory from Acemhöyük were buried.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.

Metropolitan Museum of Art