BM 135562
By kind permission of British Museum
DEPOSIT INFORMATION
| Deposit | London, The British Museum, BM 135562=1971,0227.1 |
| Notes | Purchased from Melvin L. Milligan |
SUPPORT INFORMATION
| Support type | Artefact » Sculpture in the round » Animal figure | ||||||
| Material | Bronze | ||||||
| Measures | h. 21, w. 28, wt. 2,901 | ||||||
| Decoration |
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| Notes on support and decorations | Bronze statuette of a standing bull onto a double base. Its head is lowered, it has six folds of skin around the neck, with four more folds above the eyes. The eyes were originally inlaid, but are now missing. The tail is broken but was originally in an erect position. The bull is cast on a clay core. Qualitative spectrographic analysis, undertaken by the Department of Scientific Research on a sample of metal from this object confirms that it is a copper alloy containing minor metallic impurities (unpublished report (R.L. File No. 3039). |
ORIGIN AND PROVENANCE
| Modern site | Unknown |
| Ancient site | Unknown |
| Geographical area | Unknown |
| Country | Unknown |
| Link to site record |
CULTURAL NOTES
The inscription indicates that this was one of a pair of bull figures dedicated to the goddess Dhāt-Ḥimyam. Its (missing) pair was presumably inscribed along the opposite flank, and the two must have been set up together. A very similar but un-inscribed tin-bronze bull exists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Muscarella 1988: 356-57, no. 478), up to five others are known from the Muncherjee collection and fragments of bronze and stone bull statuettes also standing on a stepped base were found in the Peristyle Hall of the Awwām temple at Marib. These frequent finds therefore indicate that they must have been a very popular form of dedication.
Several bronze bull statuettes are in the National Museum of Aden (ʿAlī ʿAqīl, Antonini 2007: 175-76, 178). Bulls on stepped bases were also carved in calcite-alabaster such as those excavated from the peristyle hall by the American Foundation for the Study of Man (Albright 1958 b: 273, cats. 49, 53, 286: 207-208).
EPIGRAPHS
| Title | BM 135562 |
| Language | Ancient South Arabian » Sabaic » Undefined Sabaic |
| Link to epigraph record |
BIBLIOGRAPHY
| Simpson 2002: 174, cat. 224 | Simpson, St John (ed.) 2002. Queen of Sheba. Treasures from the ancient Yemen. London: British Museum Press. [Catalogue of an exhibition held at the British Museum, London] |
| ʿAlī ʿAqīl and Antonini 2007: 175 | ʿAlī ʿAqīl,ʿAzza and Antonini, Sabina 2007. Bronzi sudarabici di periodo preislamico. Repertorio iconografico sudarabico. 3. Paris: de Boccard / Rome: IsIAO. [Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres; Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente] |
| Muscarella 1988 | Muscarella, Oscar W. 1988. Bronze and Iron. Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts in The Metropolitan Museun of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
| Albright, Frank P. 1958 b | Albright, Frank P. 1958. Catalogue of objects found in Mârib excavations. Pages 269-286 in Richard LeBaron Bowen and Frank P. Albright (eds). Archaeological Discoveries in South Arabia. With foreword by Wendell Phillips. (Publications of the American Foundation for the Study of Man, 2). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. |