Handmade Horse and Rider, the Rider in a Flaring Cap

Cypro-Archaic I, c. 750–600 BCE · Terracotta, pale buff slip with black and red paint · Handmade, solid

A horse and rider modelled by hand in pale buff clay. The horse is lean and upright, on four splayed, tapering legs. Its neck rises into a high, narrow crest that curves forward, edged with a ladder of short black strokes. The head projects forward into a thick cylindrical muzzle painted red; the eye is a painted circle with a central dot, and an applied pellet ear sits behind it. Black ladder bands ring the neck and run along the back and down the legs, and the forelegs and chest are washed red. A short tail rises from the rump and curls over, also red. The rider sits well back towards the rump, body upright, both arms stretched forward to grasp the mane. He wears a flat-topped cap that flares outward like a turban, his face carries faint painted details, and his body is washed red. Surface worn, with paint loss.

Commentary

This is a handmade Cypro-Archaic horse-and-rider figure of Karageorghis's Type II(i), the commonest male votive type of the period [1]. The Metropolitan Museum catalogue describes the horse and rider as "perhaps the most popular type of figurine" of Cypro-Archaic Cyprus, a subject tied to the horse-owning elite [2]. Such figures were dedicated chiefly in sanctuaries of male gods, with the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion as the type-site [3], and were also placed in tombs. The body is built in the solid "snow-man" technique common to Cypro-Archaic handmade figures [4].

The long-legged horse, the high arched neck with its crest, the rider seated near the rump with both arms reaching forward, and the painted ladder ornament all belong to the larger Cypro-Archaic I figures of sub-type II(i)a, perhaps edging towards the transitional group II(i)b around 600 BCE [1]. Two Cesnola Collection figures in the Metropolitan Museum make close comparisons. 74.51.1768, said to be from Ormidhia, has a rider sitting near the rump and stretching his arms forward to the mane, wearing a knobbed headdress described as resembling a turban, on a horse with a long neck and high forelock; 74.51.1774, also said to be from Ormidhia, shows the ladder pattern along the body and legs [2]. Louvre AM 236, with red paint on the horse and on the rider's cap, is another close parallel in its painted scheme.

The rider's cap has been described in the trade as a Macedonian kausia and taken as a sign of northern Greek influence. It is the ordinary flat-topped, flaring headdress of Cypriot Archaic riders and needs no outside source. We know of no recorded find-spot for this figure, and the Ormidhia attributions of the Cesnola comparanda are themselves only reported.