1967.26: Sphinx, part of an Incense Burner

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1967.26

Title

Sphinx, part of an Incense Burner

Classification

Sculpture

Work Type

statuette, sculpture

Date

c. 900-700 BCE

Places

Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Asia, Syria, Northwestern Syria

Period

Iron Age

Culture

Syrian

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/289152

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Steatite or chlorite

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norbert Schimmel

Accession Year

1967

Object Number

1967.26

Division

Asian and Mediterranean Art

Contact

am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary

This small sphinx with curling locks, facing right, was originally part of a sculptured openwork incense burner produced somewhere in Northern Syria or on the Levantine coast in the Iron Age. It may have been reworked as a separate object after the incense burner itself had been broken up. The sphinx of the female type seems to have originated in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Anatolian worlds as a guardian figure which made its way to the Near East where it is abundant in many media during the Iron Age. Around 700 BCE the female sphinx returned to the Greek world where it had a long and illustrious career as a fearsome guardian of tombs and as the sphinx whose deadly riddle was solved by Oedipus.
(David Gordon Mitten, 2004)

Exhibition History

• The Book and the Spade: An Exhibition of Biblical Art and Archaeology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 04/13/1975 - 05/04/1975
• 32Q: 3620 University Study Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 02/13/2015

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