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  • Striding Horned Demon
  • Striding Horned Demon
  • Striding Horned Demon

Striding Horned Demon
Mesopotamia or Iran, ca. 3000 B.C..
Arsenical copper; H. 6 7/8 in. (17.5 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2007 (2007.280)

Curator Comment

Few examples of early Mesopotamian sculpture can match this work in terms of significance and impeccable provenance. The sculpture is one of a pair of nearly identical solid-cast images of a demon wearing the upturned boots associated with highland regions, his power enhanced by the mighty horns of the ibex on his head and the body and wings of a bird of prey draped around his shoulders. It belongs to the period when the first cities in world history emerged in ancient Sumer, when a new world view conceived of human figures in realistic terms through accurate proportions and highly modeled forms. At that time, the blending of human and animal attributes to visualize the supernatural world and perhaps to express shamanic beliefs is more characteristic of the contemporary arts of Proto-Elamite Iran, where a remarkable tradition of metalworking developed.

Jean Evans, assistant curator, Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art

Provenance

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., 1950–2007; sale, Sotheby's, New York, June 7, 2007, lot 80.

Bibliography

Edgar Schenck, "Additions to the Permanent Collection: Two Near Eastern Figurines," Gallery Notes 17 (1953): 2–4; Joan Aruz, ed., Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), cat. no. 15b (entry by Holly Pittman); Jean M. Evans, "Striding Horned Demon," Recent Acquisitions: A Selection, 2007–2008. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 62, no. 2 (Fall 2008).

Related Links

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Listen to a conversation between Philippe de Montebello and curator Joan Aruz about this work of art.