Foundation Figure
CultureMesopotamian
Dateca. 2090 B.C.E.
MediumBronze
DimensionsOverall: 8 1/2 × 3 1/2 inches (21.59 × 8.89 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust
Object number30-1/51
On View
On viewGallery Location
- 103
Collections
DescriptionCrouching statuette of king with hand and high headdress, holding long object, fine blue and red patina.Gallery LabelThis figure was set onto mud bricks in the foundation of a temple. Its placement was meant to magically protect the building. The bull horns on figure's cap indicates that a god is portrayed: the same device reappears more than a thousand years later on the large relief to your left.
Excavated at Tello (ancient Girsu) by the Louvre Museum, 1930;
Acquired from the Louvre excavation by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1930.
Oscar White Muscarella, “312 a, b Foundation Pegs Naming Gudea,” in Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, ed. Joan Aruz, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), 440n2.
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F88-37/106
