Anthropomorph
Unknown Artist
c. 1500–1000 BCE
Medium
copper
Dimensions
23.5 × 36.5 × 0.5 cm
Classification
Sculpture
Department
Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
Accession Number
2004.31
About this artwork
Among the few works of art known from the first millennium BC in India, anthropomorphs such as this fine example have an abstract formal appeal, but their meaning and function remain mysterious. They were made during the approximately 1,500-year long period of time between the protohistoric Indus Valley civilization, which flourished between about 2,800–1,800 BC, and the Maurya period (322–187 BC), when works of art must have been made in perishable materials that no longer survive.