Apkallu figure: male with a fish-skin hood

Apkallu figure: male with a fish-skin hood

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This small baked clay figurine takes the form of a male figure with long hair and beard, staring straight ahead with large, wide-open eyes beneath arched eyebrows. A prominent nose and small, closed mouth can also be seen, although the level of detail in the features is minimal. He presses both fists to his chest, right above left. Shiny areas of the surface are modern restorations in wax. His tall rounded headdress indicates that he is wearing a fish-skin cloak, a garment associated with Assyrian priests that likely connects them with the ancient sages of Mesopotamian mythology who lived in the Apsu, a subterranean realm of fresh water. The figurine was made by pressing clay into a mold, a common method of manufacturing plaques and figurines in Mesopotamia since at least the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2000 B.C.). A thousand years later, during the Neo-Assyrian period, practitioners of magic had developed techniques for protecting interior spaces of buildings by means of a ritual that involved depositing an assemblage of figurines beneath the room’s floor. This figure was found buried under the floor in a room in a palace building at the Assyrian royal city of Nimrud, suggesting that it was intended for this function.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Apkallu figure: male with a fish-skin hoodApkallu figure: male with a fish-skin hoodApkallu figure: male with a fish-skin hoodApkallu figure: male with a fish-skin hoodApkallu figure: male with a fish-skin hood

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.