Small mouth raised sharply in the middle, large nose with angular depressions for the nostrils, deep eye sockets to accept inlay, upper and lower eyelids with rounded ridges, eyebrows tapering towards the outer end; chiselled ears, top of the head cut off flat at the hair line, back of the head left roughly tooled with central vertical insertion pin; mounted on a custom-made display stand.

PROVENANCE:
UK collection, 1990s.
Acquired on the UK art market, before 2000.
Private collection, Mr M.V., a London-based businessman.
This lot has been cleared against the Art Loss Register database, and is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

LITERATURE:
Cf. Cleveland, R.L., An Ancient South Arabian Necropolis, objects from the second campaign (1951) in the Timna Cemetery, Baltimore, 1951, pl.15, for similar head.

FOOTNOTES:
Usually the heads of this typology are exhibited frontally and in symmetrical manner. Many of the heads have rather angular features. Nearly all the objects in this category were ornamented with inlay- the eyes and the eyebrows, in many cases. The sockets designed to receive the inlaid eyes are usually shaped in a rather naturalistic way.