Iberian Peninsula to the indus

La Conscience
, la légende des Siècles, 1859
H
e, she or it is on my desk while i am writing this text. his, her or its eyes – 
drilled, black and profound – are “looking” at me: eyes or whatever these 
sharp deep holes are or mean. i cannot write without a certain uneasiness 
near he, she or it . . . 
he, she or it is embodied in an incised white stone short cylinder. this may have 
been broken: the cylinder may have been longer, maybe 20 centimetres high, more 
or less.
is it – was it – considered an object or an image? is he or she a living, mortal or 
immortal being? A male or female being? can we answer these questions? Are they 
really important? can we look and judge this item or being as people from Antiquity 
– related to it, she or he – did? until the mid-1950s the answer was clear and always 
the same: the item was the image of a mother goddess. is “it”?
this small sculpted and engraved cylinder is an “eye idol” from the iberian pen-
insula, present-day Spain and portugal, at the western end of the mediterranean, 
the gate to the Atlantic.
1
it is dated between the fourth and the third millennia Bc. 
these “idols” are shaped like elongated stone or marble cylinders with engravings 
(
cat. n° 1
). Among them, drilled holes surrounded by incised rays and sometimes 
circles at the head of the cylinder and profoundly incised zigzag horizontal or vertical 
lines – as if suggesting long hair in a simplified way. most of the “eyes” have small 
eyebrows over them, and sometimes curved vertical lines on each side that frame 
the hypnotic gaze, due especially to the so small and round “eyes”: it seems that 
they will never close.
i am using words appropriate to name parts of a living being: eyes, eyebrows, 
hair; sometimes, even arms. Are they correct? Are they really “idols”? the “eyes” that 
look like eyes of owls, and the fact that owls were the symbol of a Greek goddess, 
Athena, has been a clue to interpreting them as images or embodiments of female 
divinities. the design of the circular eyes with rays or sun-eyes appears also in small 
thin gold plaques – we can presume that the quality of the metal may have been 
associated with the radiance of the sun – deposited near the cylindrical idols. Gods 
and goddesses never sleep, contrary to human beings. So these items have been 

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considered divine figurines. could they have been or could they have represented 
other mortal or immortal beings?
A recent archaeological find has shed some light on these objects. until now, 
they had come to light without any study of the site where they had been found. the 
provenance was unknown as they came from illegal or undocumented excavations. 
the museum of huelva exhibits a stunning collection of cylindrical “idols”, present-
ed in well-lit showcases as in a minimal contemporary installation. they were all 
discovered in the archaeological site of la orden-Seminario, located around the 
city of huelva. twenty-nine idols, from two tombs, were found. they constitute the 
most important find on the iberian peninsula. dated from the very early fourth mil-
lennium Bc, they were in perfect condition. even though they were found lying on 
the ground – due to the fall of the vault – it seems that they were originally standing 
and that they were not moved. the collection may tell us about what they may have 
signified. these “idols” were not deposited alone. they were not intended to be ap-
preciated or used alone. they belong to a group. this group was standing on a tomb. 
their function and their meaning were related to the netherworld, whatever this 
may have been. they were not lying on the ground, as a dead being or an offering, 
but, despite the narrowness of their base, they were standing up – as a living being? 
they were not alone in the tomb. ceramics were also deposited. they belonged to 
a burial offering. But their function was not utilitarian. they did not contain goods. 
they might express the wealth of the living – their shape needed a complex and 
articulate working, possibly by different artisans – or they were there to “look” after 
the dead. in the first case, they symbolise richness and generosity; in the second 
case, they express ties between living and dead people, anguish or fear, and their 
function may be to put into contact both the living and the dead and to maintain 
these ties. they were representing the living, as being in touch with the dead forever. 
they may represent not a supernatural being, but the living who were trying to be 
near their dead relatives – and at the same time keeping them in the netherworld.
the idols or figurines from the neolithic and the chalcolithic on the iberian pen-
insula are, as in any other culture, of very different shapes, depending on their epoch 
and their location. Among some of the most outstanding figurines are the chillarón 
idol (cuenca museum), a spherical double “idol” – a male and female semi-spheri-
cal figure united by the circular base, maybe twins or an hermaphrodite, a sign of 
singularity – from the third–second millennia Bc; or the “eye idol” in the shape of 
a tri-dimensional X, perhaps a figure with wide opened legs or two figures united 
by the belly (provincial Archaeological museum, Badajoz). they are quite different 
from the “idols” found in the mediterranean area, like the rena white marble male 
figurine from the third millennium Bc (Badajoz museum), so surprisingly similar to 
Sardinian figurines, in the way the hair is carved. others are comparable to medi-
terranean figurines. the raised pointed short “arms” of the large Artana “idol” (third 
millennium Bc, Archaeological museum, Burriana) (
fig. 3),
52 cm high, sculpted in 
limestone but quite eroded, are similar to the “arms” of some of the slate plaque 
idols – 
infra - but the artana figurine raises questions:
it was discovered in the 
1920s in a muslim cemetery, and may have come from the decoration of an islamic 
1
Male figure
Rena, Badajoz, Spain 
III millennium BC 
Marble
Museo Arqueológico, Badajoz,
inv. 10434

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2
Anthr
opomorphic figure (?)
Artana, Spain
III millennium BC (?)
Sandstone
Museo Arqueológico, Burriana 
(Castellón)
building – having not been interpreted then as a figurine but as an abstract motif, 
maybe a sort of sacred stone.
the cylindrical idols do look quite different from other figurines from the rest 
of the mediterranean. Another type, the grey plaque-idols, made of slate (
cat. 3-5
), 
constitute a large group of almost two thousand figurines – if there are indeed fig-
urines – found all in the south of the iberian peninsula (Spain and portugal). What 
are they and what do they represent, if we can find an answer? the plaque idols, 
also from the third millennium Bc, found, as the cylindrical figurines, in several sites 
in the south of the peninsula, have traditionally been interpreted as divine images: 
images of a mother goddess, the same protective and pacific mediterranean goddess 
supposedly followed by all prehistoric cultures. this conventional interpretation may 
or must be questioned for different reasons. the first one is that not all plaques have 
anthropomorphic features (features that are drilled or incised eyes and sometimes 
eyebrows and sculpted raised arms on both sides of the plaque. incised “eyes” and 
one or two drilled holes at the “top” can cohabitate, suggesting that, when edges are 
worn-out, the plaque may have been used or reused as a pendant). So they may not 
even be anthropomorphic figurines at all. except for some larger plaques (as in the 
museo Arqueológico de Sevilla), most have a similar size. they fit in a hand. they 
can be held,
as a blade or a flint, for instance. they are always covered with incised 
geometric patterns: triangles – interpreted as prominent vaginas, which is strange as 
these triangles are incised on the whole body – squares, vertical, horizontal or curved 
lines. sometimes, horizontal lines divide the plaque in two, suggesting an articulate 
anthropomorphic body. most of the time they are adapted to the trapeze shape (with 
round corners), a shape vaguely evocative of a flint stone. the motifs do not seem to be 
representative. they are not or they cannot be associated with any anthropomorphic 
feature. However, the patterns are similar to textile ones. do they represent clothes? 
textile patterns were not just decorative. they were ways of recording important 
data in the life of a community. they were a kind of “pre-writing”. they may have 
measured the passing of time. And they certainly constituted identification symbols 
of a group. in spite of the difference of work implied between incising a plaque and 
weaving wool thread, these functions may be the same. Plaques and textiles were 
signs: they embodied values shared by a group composed of living and dead beings, 
ancestors and human beings, values materialised in graphic signs and transferred 
from one generation to another. these plaques have been found in funerary contexts. 
the buried dead were considered still part of a community, therefore, these signs 
might even be heraldic motifs, as professor Katina l. lillios has suggested. they 
may have been identifying signs and at the same time be the registers of past events 
or of the passing of events. they might represent a protective divinity (as they have 
been interpreted for years), and they also acted as transmitters of values – expressed 
through graphic motifs that could be easily recognised as belonging to a group – in 
order to strengthen the ties between past and present members of the community.
Protective figures? Certainly: they would have preserved the memory of a commu-
nity, being testimony of the legacy and validity of shared values. for these possible 
reasons they were far more important than just “divinities”.
P.A.
1
the best collections of prehistoric iberian “idols” 
(cylindrical and plaque idols, of different sizes) are 
in the archaeological museums of the spanish cities 
of sevilla – perhaps the best –
Huelva, Badajoz and 
madrid, and in Portuguese museums (museu nacional 
de Arqueologia e etnologia, lisbon, museo lapidar 
infante d. Henrique, faro).