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Composite statue

A reference page linking a name, group, or concept to the materials that discuss it.

A sculpted image assembled from multiple components or materials; missing parts do not automatically reveal identity or material.

Warka Head, white marble, about 21 cm high; late fourth millennium/ca. 3000 BCE. Eye and eyebrow inlays lost. Possibly Inanna; lighting warms the stone’s colour. Iraq Museum, photo, 2019
Warka Head, white marble, about 21 cm high; late fourth millennium/ca. 3000 BCE. Eye and eyebrow inlays lost. Possibly Inanna; lighting warms the stone’s colour. Iraq Museum, photo, 2019© Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SALicense · Image source

Text

A composite statue combines separately made components or different materials, such as a stone element with inlays or an attached hair covering. Joins, holes, grooves and material traces support identifying assembly rather than conjecture alone.

The WarkaUrukAncient city at Warka in southern Iraq, a major urban centre around 3200 BCE that preserved early writing and accounting tablets.Glossary · Click to read the explanation Head retains eye sockets and eyebrow grooves; archaeological description also identifies possible fastenings for a wig or headdress. They imply an appearance richer than bare stone, without preserving the full body or naming every lost material. Interpreting the head as part of a composite statue is probable; identifying the figure as InannaInanna / IshtarProminent Mesopotamian goddess with a major centre at Uruk, whose parentage and cult traditions vary rather than forming one fixed genealogy.Glossary · Click to read the explanation is a separate question. The photograph shows the surviving head, not an imagined body.[1][2]

References and notes

  1. Ann Louise Perkins (1949). The Comparative Archeology of Early Mesopotamia. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 25. University of Chicago. Printed pp. 135–136: vase, ruler and priestess possibilities; pp. 150–151: marble head, inlays, wig/headdress fastenings and modelling. Selected passages, not the entire book. Older chronology and terminology balanced against a modern catalogue. Return to the text ↑
  2. Clemens Reichel (2008). Cataloging the Losses: The Oriental Institute’s Iraq Museum Database Project. In G. Emberling & K. Hanson (eds), Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past, OIMP 28; with D. George & M. Gibson, The Looting of the Iraq Museum Complex. Selected pp. 22–25 on looting and the reconstructed vase base; p. 57, Figure 3, visually inspected head entry: ca. 3000 BCE, white marble, height 21 cm. P. 59, Figure 5: four bands and ancient repair. Not the full volume. Recovery month varies internally and is not resolved here. Return to the text ↑

Research history

Substantive changes are retained here. Minor copy edits remain in the internal operational log.

  1. Edition 2 · 11 October 2026 · editor:aladmin

    Substantive record update

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IL Archive, «Composite statue», Edition 2, https://ilarchive.com/en/entities/composite-statue