Figurine

Popular sculpture of small dimensions (7-10 cm in height), representing human and animal figures, mainly made in terracotta. This type of artefact was very common in the ancient Near East from the Neolithic Age onwards (when it was imbued with magic meaning connected to fecundity). Figurines appeared in Yemen at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, mainly in relation with funerary contexts. Small bronze sculptures (no more than 10-15 cm in height), with votive functions, are also examined.

Terracotta

Terracotta figurines originate mainly from South Arabia, in the Jawf region and the Sabaean area, although some of them are of unknown provenance (Rathjens 1955). They were mainly documented during the 1st millennium BCE, and include anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations, predominantly women and dromedaries. Most of them are from funerary contexts, such as the necropolis annexed to the Awām temple of Maʾrib. They were a widespread burial gift.

Female figurines – usually upright, rarely seated – are highly stylised: often with a pointed (bird-shaped) head, outstretched arms, marked breasts, closed legs (fig. 1). Likewise, dromedaries are rudimentary, with raised heads, and open, running legs (fig. 2). Jewellery and clothing, as well as reins, saddles and loads, are represented by applied clay elements or painted red stripes, and anatomical details are sometimes incised.

In funerary contexts, camel figurines might have been cheap substitutes for the real animals of the dead, while women were probably intended as mourners. But they may also have been linked to other symbolic functions, as shown by the discovery of figurines in various settlements of the Maʾrib oasis, the Barʾān temple, or in the Almaqah temple in Ṣirwāḥ, where other zoomorphic categories (bull, ram and bird) were found. In these contexts, they were probably associated with a ceremonial function.

During the 1st millennium BCE, dromedary figurines were common in many towns in North and East Arabia, especially in sites with trade contacts with Sabaʾ, such as Qaryat al-Fāw or Taymāʾ (O’Neill 2014: 332).

The Bronze Age settlement of Sabir was an important production centre of terracotta figurines, where hundreds of them were found in levels from the first half of the 1st millennium BCE. Most of them represent animals, while anthropomorphic figurines depict naked, callipygous women, with comparable iconography to that attested on the other side of the Red Sea. The relationship between these figurines and Sabaean production is unclear.

Bronze

In South Arabia, worshippers showed their devotion by bringing votive offerings for the gods to temples, either to thank them for favours (ex-voto), or to seek protection, but also in pure worship. Bronze figurines were probably the offerings of ordinary and modest people, regardless of whether or not they bore an inscribed dedication.

The museum collections of South Arabian antiquities house a large quantity of these artefacts, datable between the 4th-3rd centuries BCE and the 3rd century CE. They mostly represent animals, such as ibexes (fig. 3), bulls, dromedaries, snakes and later, horses, sometimes with riders. Animal figurines were dedicated to specific deities, on the basis of their symbolism: ibexes and bulls to Almaqah, dromedaries to Dhu-Samāwī. Sometimes they bear the inscribed wish/protection formula ‘Wadd is father’ (Wd ʾb, see RES 4083) (fig. 4).

The human bronze figurines were usually flat and roughly worked. They depict male or female worshippers, such as the group originating from the Wādī Markha (fig. 5), but also prisoners, such as those from the Ṣanʿāʾ National Museum collection (YM 23764, 23765, 23778).

See also Sculpture.

Alessandra Lombardi

References and suggested reading

• Arbach, M. & R. Audouin 2007. Ṣanʿāʾ National Museum. Collection of Epigraphic and Archaeological Artifacts from al-Jawf Sites. Part II. Sana’a.
• Arbach, M. & J. Schiettecatte 2006. Catalogue des pièces archéologiques et épigraphiques du Jawf au Musée National de Ṣanʿāʾ. Sana’a: CEFAS.
• Buffa, V. 2004. Five Female Figurines from South-West Arabia and the Horn of Africa, in A.V. Sedov (ed.) Scripta yemenika. Studies in History and Culture of Ancient and Medieval Yemen: 146–150. Moscow.
• O’Neill, D’a. 2014. First Millennium BC South Arabian Terracotta Figurines from the Marib Oasis and Sirwah, Yemen, ZOrA 7: 324–366.
• Rathjens, C. 1955. Sabaeica. Bericht über die archäologischen Ergebnisse seiner zweiten, dritten und vierten Reise nach Südarabien. II. Teil. Die unlokalisierten Funde (Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg, 24). Hamburg: Kommissionsverlag Ludwig Appel. 
• Robin, C.J. & B. Vogt (eds) 1997. Yémen. Au pays de la reine de Saba’. Exposition présentée à l’Institut du Monde Arabe du 25 oct. 1997 au 28 fév. 1998. Paris: Flammarion.