Ave!

Elegant Lady, Statuette fragment, Early 2nd Century AD

Lead with iron interior; 37mm/45.8gm

Con/ Cleaned, gray lead patina with earthen deposits, nose and mouth plow flattened. :-(

Description/ Female head, hair waved and parted about, etc., formed and cast about an iron core. See the photo!

Seller's Note/ What a curious artifact, indeed. Who or why would anyone create a statuette from lead in the first place? Perhaps it was never meant to be the head from a statue and served another purpose altogether? As seen in the photo, on the back of her head there are residual traces of iron leaking from an iron core that runs upward from her neck. Very strange and we've never seen anything like this before!

But whom or what does this elegant head represent? A goddess? A personification? Perhaps even an emperor's wife, such as Sabina? Sadly, we will never know but whomever she was, she certainly had a great hair-do!