Eternal Little Goddess

STEATOPYGOUS GODDESS GANDHÂRA 2nd-3rd. Cent. AD

If there exists an original art amongst all of them, it would have to be that of Gandhâra: born of the union of the Greek and Indian cultures between the 1st and the 7th century AD, it would develop in a geographic triangle which today corresponds to the part of Afghanistan situated to the North of the Kabul river, encompassing up to the entire valley of Peshawar in Pakistan. After the invasion of this region by Alexander the Great of Macedonia in AD 327, the apostle Thomas met the king of Gandhâra, Gondophares, while traveling towards India. He discovered that at that time in the easternmost part of the Old World, still influenced by classic aesthetic criteria, they were starting in the time of Christ to represent Buddha in human form. That constituted a tremendous revolution, resulting in a realistic art of great quality bound to the techniques of Greco-Roman sculpture in the round (using stucco and the local gray shale) and inventing an iconography linked to Buddhist India. This Golden Age for Gandhâra, where the Chinese came on pilgrimage, is that of the Buddhist kings of the Kushan dynasty, determining factor for the art and architecture. Unfortunately, the invasion of the Huns in AD 450 followed by that of the Sassanids aided by the Turks, put Gandhâra back under Persian suzerainty in 568, thus signaling the end of this exciting period.

via > galeriegolconda.com

Composite Figurine

Origin: Turkmenistan

Circa: 2100 BC to 1700 BC

Dimensions: 2.125" (5.4cm) high

Style: Bactrio-Margiana

Medium: steatite

Small stone composite figurine portrayed squatting, wearing a robe decorated with a low relief abstract wavy pattern, perhaps imitating sheep's fleece, with a limbless body. This figurine could be ascribed to a group of composite statuettes made of soft black steatite or chlorite and alabster unearthed prevalently in Bactria-Margiana and dating to the early 2nd millennium BC. Western Central Asia or Bactrio-Margiana, now known as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and northern Afghanistan, has yielded objects attesting to a highly developed civilization in the late third and early second millennium B.C. Artifacts from the region indicate that there were contacts with Iran to the southwest. As clay copies of such statuettes have also been found in burial contexts, it is likely that they would have been made of various materials. Unfortunately the archaeological evidence is still lacking, as many of the statuettes from excavated sites are either incomplete or shattered.

Such composite statuettes, always carefully executed, have been generally associated with burials and probably portrayed the women buried in the grave. Yet, the standardisation of their shapes would seem to point to an ideal rather than a real person, including the fact that some of the best representations of squatted ladies in compartemented seals from the same area and time featured also wings or animals suggesting a divine connotation.

via > miniaturesinancientart.com

Aphrodite of Bactriana

Tillya Tepe, Tomb VI

1st century BC-1st century AD

National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul

via > historyandcivilization.com

Nude ivory figurine with hinged arms

3rd century BC

Discovered at the archeological site of A Khanoum, and exhibited at the ‘Afghanistan, Rediscovered Treasures’ exhibition at Musee Guimet in Paris, France. The national museum in Kabul.

The museum is helping to restore a part of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, most of which has been destroyed forever by decades of war and looting. Before the wars the Kabul museum had built up the most opulent collection in Central Asia, spanning 50,000 years of Afghan cultural history. But during the years before the Taliban capture of Kabul in 1996, 80 percent of the treasures were looted. 

via > zimbio.com

Treasures from Afghanistan: in pictures 

Treasures from Afghanistan: Hellenic cultural and artistic influences can be found in many of the pieces and those at Tillya Tepe were found alongside artefacts from China and India.

Statuette of a woman standing on a makara,

1st-2nd centuries AD made from ivory

via > telegraph.co.uk