This wonderful marble idol is designed with a degree of stylization characteristic of the design of idols created in virtually every early civilization of the Ancient Near East. As a result, the body has been treated as a uniform disc-shape form in which indications of the arms and legs have been purposefully suppressed. Two tall and elegant columnar-like necks, separated from that body by a neck-line, rise up to display two separately made, triangularly-shaped heads which are conjoined at their sides. The features of these heads are minimally defined by linear adjuncts in-filled with darker material in order to indicate the hair, forehead, and eyes. The five striations in the far corner of the head on the right may be indications of a beard in order to suggest that this idol is to be understood as a god. Accepting this suggestion enables one to identify the figure to the left as his goddess- consort. Their shared, disc-shaped body is ornamented in linear style, again in-filled in places with darker material, with a dominating X-shaped crisscrossed bandoleer-like set of straps, each divided by a central rib, the resulting zones decorated with obliquely sloping lines. The upper straps of the bandoleer are joined by a slightly convex third band, decorated in two superimposed rows recalling a kind of checker- board pattern. There is an additional ornament at the neck of each figure which one is tempted to identify as a necklace, consisting of a horizontal, ladder-like pattern. The edges of the bandoleers and of this ladder-like pattern are further enhanced by a series of incised dotted circle

Antiquities
Ancient Near East