The sphere-bearing anthropomorphic figurines of Amathus

O’Bryhim examines female anthropomorphic terracotta figurines from the Cypro-Archaic tombs of Amathus that hold round objects. He separates figures holding frame drums from a group holding spheres, and asks what the spheres represent and how the figures may have functioned in funerary ritual. The evidence is the size, shape, attachment and position of the terracotta objects, comparisons with figurines from Amathus and Ayia Irini, spherical stones from Meniko and Ayia Irini, and literary accounts, coin images and other depictions of baetyls in Cyprus and the Levant.

He argues that figures holding a round object before the pelvis form a separate group, since their objects are spherical, held in both hands and positioned differently from frame drums. Comparing these spheres with baetyls from Cypriot and Levantine sacred contexts, he proposes that the figurines represent people carrying a cult image during a funerary rite (pp. 40–43).

In his reconstruction the actual baetyl returned to a local shrine, while the terracotta spheres stayed in the tomb as substitutes. The figurines and the baetyls from Meniko and Ayia Irini are both Cypro-Archaic, which O’Bryhim uses as part of his case (pp. 42–43).