Limestone Kouros Head

Limestone Kouros Head

Description:

Head without face from limestone male figure (kouros); remains of red paint in the tie that binds his long hair. Broken around the neck, the break is at an oblique angle reaching from above chin to onset of the shoulder. The face is broken off, the surface of the limestone is fine porous. On the knot of the hairband in the back there are traces of red paint. Above the forehead and on the frontal side of the calvarium at least four, possibly five, parted, flat and even tresses which are placed sideways behind the ears. At least two tresses around the temples are lying over the hairband part of which is broken off with the face. These tresses appear to end in the temples. The other tresses fall onto the shoulders with three of them visible from the front on either side. At the back of the head along the line of the calvarium-tresses nine small tresses are set which are resumed as broader flatly rounded tresses below the hairband and which are falling into the back in a fan-like fashion. It is not clear whether the tresses would originally have been separated with some falling onto the back and some in the front. The ears are small and carefully worked.


Dimensions: Height: 6.90 centimetres; Width: 5 centimetres; Depth: 3.60 millimetres


Object Type: figure


Series: Höckmann Type 1 (Sub group 2)


Techniques: carved; painted


Condition: Relatively fair though incomplete

Period:

Archaic II

Date:

575 - 550 BC

Collection:

British Museum

Provenance:

Sanctuary of Apollo (Naukratis) (?)

Accession Number:

null