Late Bronze Age Zoomorphic Sculpture

The horn-like protuberances on the head of this lively animal suggest that it is a bull, for centuries the most noble and favored sacrifice to the gods of antiquity. Millennia ago, it was crafted near the temple of some now-obscure god and offered as a gift to win the benign protection of that deity. It seems to glow still with the energy of the ancient hands through which it passed: the potter who pulled its shape quickly from a lump of wet clay; the votary who selected it as an appropriate gift; the priest who served the god and daily collected the treasures left in his name. When we hold this abstract little animal in our own hands, we become as one with the past.