__._,_.___----- Original Message -----From: rolf5568Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 6:10 PMSubject: [Ancientartifacts] Re: More questions about Syro hittite figuresThank you very much Jason, you've pretty much covered anything I was
going to say!
I'll try to stick to my guns on ritual breakage versus accidental
damage on Syro-Hittite figures: I know archaeologists love to explain
any battered assemblage as ritual breakage, but I can't make myself
believe that the ancient inhabitants of Syria were quite so clumsy as
to break so many of these figures without any reason whatsoever :-).
The generally dull and undecorated pottery vessels of the same period
do not seem to suffer the same fate so it can't be blamed entirely on
environmental reasons. Although the idols are most often broken on
the neck they also turn up with snaps to the shoulder and upper torso
which are less logical accidental fracture points. Having been bucked
off a horse during the weekend I can confirm the veracity of this
statement first-hand!
I guess no-one will ever know the definitive answer and in a couple
of thousand years archaeologists excavating junk yards may classify
them as ritual automobile kill-sites....
Thanit figures: there's a large and inexpensive repaired group of
these in circulation from a published Belgian collection at the
moment. Michael at BB-Antiken in Germany had some last year, I don't
know if he still does. If he's sold out, I saw a pile recently in an
antiques shop somewhere else....
Cheers,
Rolf Kiaer
www.heliosgallery.com
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