With its features blunted by time, this primordial-looking figure appears only half formed. Resting one hand on her belly, the 2-inch-tall female figurine has coffee-bean-shaped eyes, a large nose, and breasts, and wears a thick scarf around her neck. A deep hole in the base was used to affix the figurine to a pedestal, a standard or, perhaps, the now-lost lower half of the body. This figurine is thought to have been a fertility statue or, possibly, a divine image. Fashioned by an unknown craftsman of the Yarmukian culture, which flourished in central Israel and Jordan some 8,000 to […]
