 Hi everyone and welcome to your daily Barnes takeout. I am Karl Walsh. I'm a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Research, Interpretation and Education at the Barnes and today I wanted to have a look at a very kind of curious figurine that we have in our collection, which is in this cabinet against the north wall of room 16. And if we zoom in on this cabinet, you can see that there are lots of representations of the human body. We have lots of terracotta figurines from ancient Greece. We have some other smaller figurines from possibly from the ancient Near East and these little bone and ivory Buddhist statues. And then we've got kind of representations of people on Greek ceramics and stone sculpture and relief sculpture. And the figurine that we're looking at today is right here on the bottom shelf. And the reason I wanted to talk about this figurine today is because it's one of the few objects outside of the Egyptian objects that we have in the collection that dates to the Bronze Age period. And this little figurine comes from Bronze Age Cyprus, particularly from the late Bronze Age period, roughly kind of 1500 to 1200 BC. And although Cyprus is a really big island in the Mediterranean, we still don't really fully understand a lot of things about ancient Cypriot society, how it was organized politically and socially and things like what the religious beliefs were. And so this figurine we're looking at today is an example of a type of Cypriot object that currently we don't know very much about and its role and function is very debated. So I thought this would be an interesting subject for us to have a look at today. So having a look at our figurine, you can see that it's made out of clay and that it's handmade, which is quite clear through kind of the asymmetrical features and the very kind of rough incisions that decorate the figurine. It's formed clearly female. You can see that it has a very kind of exaggerated hip area. And then it's got this pubic triangle, which is decorated with all these hatched incisions. And then she has two kind of small conical breasts. And the general shape of this figurine is kind of diamond. It's got this kind of wide hips in the middle which tapers down to very thin little legs and feet and then tapers upwards to this chest area where we have more decorations that kind of might be belts and garments and maybe some jewelry around the neck. And we have these two arms that are just kind of clasped against the chest and the fingers here are just literally incisions into the clay to suggest fingers. And then we got at the top this very kind of strange head, which is got this kind of pinched face and it's pinched literally because it was probably made by pinching the clay together to create this kind of almost beak-looking face, which lends to the term that archaeologists call these bird-faced goddesses. And it's just because the face kind of looks like a bird, not that we actually think this is a kind of bird-headed deity or anthropomorphic figure. So it's got this very kind of pinched face with these two sets of eyes which were made from kind of small bits of clay that have been attached separately. And then we have these massive ears or maybe it could be a headdress of some kind. And it has these two little perforations in each side. And we have lots of other examples of these figurines and in some a lot of the cases they actually have separately made little hoop earrings which are placed within these perforations. So these are probably originally had some kind of like earring attached to them too. So the form of this figurine is very interesting just because it is obviously some kind of female figure but who exactly it represents is really quite a mystery to us at the moment. Many archaeologists think that this is some kind of goddess, perhaps a fertility goddess given the kind of the emphasis on the female genitalia and kind of the breasts. And in some cases some of these figurines also have little infants who are kind of cradled in these arms against the chest. So people kind of suggested that these you know sexual features and these kind of links to motherhood might suggest that it's some kind of fertility goddess. And others have pointed out that this kind of form this nude form links it as well to near eastern goddesses. So goddesses like Astart and Ishtar who are worshipped in the Levant which is the area of Syria Palestine just across the water from Cyprus and in Mesopotamia who was a goddess of sexuality and warfare. So maybe our little figurine here is the result of Cypriot peoples adopting and kind of hybridizing near eastern goddesses to make them kind of Cypriot goddesses on Cyprus. And I have to kind of agree with this. I think others have pointed out that we really don't know very much about Cypriot religion at all from this period. And just because we kind of see a nude female form maybe we shouldn't always just go to an interpretation of seeing this as a fertility goddess. People make images of the nude human body for a variety of different reasons. And you can actually see this in the cabinet this figurine is in lots of nude figures and nudity is always kind of very interpretable like it has married a lot of different uses and functions. So we kind of had to be careful and sometimes I think archaeologists and art historians can be guilty of labeling objects like this that we don't know very much about and don't know how to interpret very well as something kind of religious or ritual or cultic which is kind of code for we don't really know how this was used or what it is. So it's something to do with supernatural forces or something that we don't really kind of understand. So currently it's really hard to say who our figurine represents here and what exactly the function of it was. So maybe instead we could think of other ways of interpreting it and some people have kind of suggested looking at these from a more kind of personal level. And I really like this interpretation and so for instance kind of thinking about where these figurines are usually found. They're usually found in houses and in burials. So that kind of straight away suggests that they are maybe something that is a little bit more of a kind of a personal object that has a kind of value to an individual that was used in life. So used in the household and then taken with them into death. So taken with them into the burial and looking at the form of them as well. The back of these figurines are often not decorated at all. So they're just kind of smooth. And the shape of them in this kind of diamond form kind of actually lends them to being held in the hands quite well. And if you actually look at this figurine as well, you'll notice that in the gallery it's presented on the stand standing up. But actually it would never be able to achieve this position in real life. The feet are just way too small and it would just fall over. So it must have been kind of displayed or stored on its back or kind of leaning against something. But again, I think it's probably something that is meant to be held. And having something kind of small that's portable really lends it to being something that's kind of more connected to a person because you can take it around with you and you can hold it and you can interact with it rather than just kind of looking at it. And another thing that's kind of interesting about these figurines is this kind of strange ears slash headdress at the top that often have these earrings. And at this time in Cyprus, there is a lot of production of bronze earrings. And they seem to be very kind of standardized in their weight, which almost kind of lends to them being a kind of currency or maybe a kind of a sign of personal wealth and status that is connected to the value and weight of bronze. So maybe this is more connected with expressing social status in society through kind of the wearing of jewelry and the wearing of these types of earrings. And I think this kind of allows us to be a little bit more flexible on how we interpret pieces of art like this rather than just taking the nude female form and saying it's something connected to sex and fertility and instead thinking about how these things can be used in other ways. So ultimately we don't really know how this was used. And so next time that you're in the barns, I actually really encourage you to go and have a look at this figurine and have a think about what your own interpretations of this might be, which might help to solve the mystery of what these little figurines represent and what they were used for. So thank you for watching this Barns Takeout. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you haven't already, please do subscribe to our channel to get your daily serving of art. And please leave a comment where we really enjoy reading and responding to these. So please take care and stay safe. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barns Foundation.