Sculpture From Dura Europas: the Head of a Bearded God

One of the artworks in the Yale art gallery is the Head of a Bearded God. This sculpture of bearded man that looks old and wise. This piece has curly hair, bushy eyebrows, and very wide/big eyes. The piece is is classified as a sculpture, its from the first century A.D. 1-100 during the Roman period. The material of the piece is limestone, and it was painted according to the Yale art gallery. They know this because they found traces of paint on the art work. This piece was excavated by the yale-french Excavations at Duras-Europos, in 1928-37. The piece wasn’t fully preserved, part of the nose is missing, has a bunch of cracks in the limestone around the neck area and below the beard. The head looks very calm like he has a lot of information. He seems like he is in his mid 30’s. There is a lot of pigment around the eyes, brows, and lips that is preserved. It no longer has its color that it originally had when it was made. It also has a commanding presence to it and seems like it was an important person in the culture.

This piece is a relief sculpture, you can see all around it and it pops out. It gives a sense of energy and also gives a sense of vitality. This piece was on loan in the met located in New York since 1999. The sculpture was finally returned to Yale art gallery and is on display in the present day. It is set to believe this sculpture was made to honor and represent some godly figure in the culture of Dura-Europos. It was outside of the Temple of Atargatis, and the piece could be a representation of the greek mythology god Zues. The sculpture has an oval head, with a flat face, and detailed patterns carved into the beard and mustache. The eyes had black paint and the lips had red paint, this all we can tell from the preserved paint pigments. This head can also represent a semitic divinity, and also could be the storm god Hadad because of where it was located and the temple it’s from. This sculpture is obviously a male head and has so sort power to it. It also had plaster on it with the limestone and paint. This piece has no known artist because it was so long ago, and it was found in modern day syria. This piece means a lot to syrian culture during the Dura-Europos time with the romans. Even Though, the gods they are talking about are greek the romans gods that they worshipped had a lot in common with the greek gods.They are also the same gods, but with just different names. For example, the greek god Zues is the same as the Roman god Jupiter, and the greek god Poseidon is the same with the roman god Neptune. So the sculpture can be apart of greek and roman time periods who knows. This sculpture is unique in its own way it has details some artworks don’t and is so mysterious on what it interprets. We are lucky to see this piece at all because it was preserved underground, even though it's not perfect and has some damage.

To tell you the truth I’m not really an art history person, I love to draw and make my own pictures. I never was into learning about culture or where the art came from, but this piece is interesting to me because it is so unknown. Also, I like mythology and know a lot about it. So the sculpture having that about makes me interested because people really used to worship these gods they make movies about, and that I know what gods they are talking about; So I have knowledge on what god is, who he/she is, and what he/she looks like because of many video games. This what really grabbed my attention for this piece and one of the reasons why I chose to write about it.

In my opinion, this sculpture also looks like Zues son the demigod Hercules because of how commanding the male face looks. It almost looks like he is a leader of some army like Hercules, since Hercules was a mighty warrior. The beard, head shape, and the hair resembles a lot of other pieces of art of Hercules the Romans and Greeks made to worship him. The sculpture was found outside of a temple so it is someone who was worshipped, and experts say it could by Zues or Hadad the storm god, but they said it is definitely a god that was worshipped.

This sculpture has a lot of history to it we don’t know about, but a lot of meaning we can understand it. Such as how it looks commanding, serious, has energy, and vitality. The history on where the art resides is interesting and how it is in my home state and how a university yale funded in the excavation Duras-europos. This piece has some many detail patterns to it in the beard and the shape is so unique. Also, the material is limestone and used to be painted with different colors. These are some of the other reason why I chose to do research on this piece because of the unique characteristics it has, the history behind it not only from where is from, but what art gallery it belonged to, and lastly the mythology behind it.