Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Female Torso
Not on view
Between the third and tenth centuries, the dead were laid to rest at a site in present-day Niger downstream from the Inland Niger delta. The burial ground’s density and expanse suggest a veritable city of the departed. Several hundred individual graves were marked by upturned pottery urns, some of which were cylinders topped by figurative imagery such as this torso. The most elaborate of these were full-bodied equestrians, while the most basic were highly abstract, independent heads.
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