This pillar features a large, forward-gazing bird with three parallel horizontal lines under the head, two large triangles below them, and a geometric pattern on the chest. The triangles depicted may represent feathers or schematically folded wings. Alternatively, they may represent breasts and thus, as suggested for later Neolithic figurines, may depict hybrid female-bird figures. In the absence of any explicit human attributes, we consider the first interpretation preferable.
Provenance: Al-Ǧurf al-ʾAḥmar, Syria.
Current location: National Museum of Damascus.
Age: Neolithic.
Material: Limestone.
Height: 74 cm.
Photo: Benoît Bireau.
Yosef Garfinkel and Sarah Krulwich. Avian depiction in the earliest Neolithic communities of the Near East. The Journal of the Council for British Research in the Levant Volume 55, 2023 - Issue 2.
Stordeur, D., Brenet, M., Der Aprahamian, G. and Roux, J.-C. 2000. Les bâtiments communautaires de Jerf el Ahmar et Mureybet horizon PPNA (Syrie). Paléorient 26(1): 29–44.
ʾIḍāʾāt ʿalā al-Matḥaf al-Waṭanī fī Dimašq. DGAM (Direction Générale des Antiquités et des Musées de Syrie). Ministère de la Culture, 2006.
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