Iberian Peninsula to the indus

part of predynastic iconography, 
which evidently had its own specific 
visual language, supposedly referring 
primarily to aspects of power and 
control over chaos. Their exact 
function remains unknown, but it is 
likely that they were used within ritual 
practice, either communal or personal.
H.D.
References: 
Patch 2011; Bierbrier 2012, pp. 
376–377; Hendrickx & Eyckerman 2012; 
Stevenson 2017; Ordynat 2018.

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169
168
44
femAle fiGure
Egypt, Hierakonpolis (Kôm el-Akhmar) 
or Ma’amariya (Northern Egypt) (?)
Naqada II period (ca. 3450–3300 BC)
Painted baked clay, H. 18 cm
Musée d’Archéologie nationale 
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, inv. 77.740.C 
(Jacques or Henri de Morgan 
Collection)
Bibliography: 
Ucko 1968, p. 105, 
no. 83; 
Archéologie comparée
1982, 
p. 129.
This figurine belongs to one of the 
“canonical” types of predynastic 
Egypt, which currently comprises 
almost 250 definitively identified 
examples. Made of three fragments 
re-joined in ancient times, it has 
a characteristic head with a bird-
like profile. The slightly misaligned 
breasts and the curvature are quite 
accentuated while the legs are joined 
to form a sort of pivot, which could 
have served originally to keep the 
statuette stable, stuck in the ground 
or attached to some kind of support. 
This lower part of the body is poorly-
defined and bears traces of a white 
engobe which some scholars believe 
is meant to suggest a “skirt”. The 
orientation of the fracture line of the 
arms, broken under the shoulder in 
ancient times, indicates that the arms 
originally extended along the torso 
or were slightly bent at the height 
of the stomach or genitals, as some 
examples published by W.M.F. Petrie 
in 1920. On the other hand, it can be 
ruled out that the arms were raised 
above the head, as in the renowned 
type of the “dancing figurine”.
Many questions arise when studying 
this statuette, one of the prize objects 
in the Morgan Collection at the Musée 
d’Archéologie nationale (MAN). 
The massive quantity of archaeological 
material donated to the museum by 
the brothers Henri and Jacques de 
Morgan in 1909–1910, the outbreak 
of WWI and, in 1927, the sudden 
death of Henri Hubert, director of 
the comparative archaeology room, 
resulted in a substantial delay and 
a vague entry on the figurine in 
the museum inventory. In fact, only 
in 1939 were the “fragments of 
four glossy grey and red terracotta 
female statuettes” included in a 
lot of objects whose provenance 
was specifically identified as Kôm 
el-Akhmar (Hierakonpolis). After 
careful investigation, it became clear 
that presently no other statuette 
or fragment in the collection can 
be attributed to other predynastic 
Egyptian sites.
Therefore, it seems that this piece 
does belong to that lot, although 
there is still some room for doubt 
given the lack of precision in the 
inventory description. The delayed 
registration makes it impossible to 
even know whether the figurine comes 
from Jacques or Henri de Morgan’s 
collection. The two archaeologists 
explored the region of Hierakonpolis 
several decades apart. Unfortunately, 
Jacques makes no mention of any 
discovery of this type in his 1896 work, 
and a comparison of the information in 
Henri’s excavation notes, conserved at 
the MAN, with the articles published 
at the end of the two explorations 
carried out on behalf of the Brooklyn 
Museum in 1906–1907 and 1907–1908 
provides no definite data on the exact 
provenance of the figurine.
It is worth pointing out, however, that 
the notes report rather cryptically 
that the terrain of the zone of the 
kjökkenmöddings
(habitat) of Kôm 
el Akhmar was in complete disarray, 
with an “enormous mass of rubble, 
terracotta statuettes of animals, 
cows . . . and vessels”, among which 
may have been discovered various 
fragments of our figurine. While it 
has been associated in some cases 
with figurines found in funerary 
contexts in Ma’amariya during the 
same explorations, nonetheless there 
are several notable differences: the 
arms are positioned differently; the 
impasto is less fine and has stains due 
to defective firing, and the overall 
appearance is cruder. P. Ucko has 
suggested that a chemical analysis 
of the white engobe in the lower