Quadruped, Possibly a Horse

10th-first half 7th century BCE · Sculpture

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Harvard Art Museums

Cambridge, United States

It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.

Checked: 7 hours ago
In this state since: Sep 27, 2026
Source: The museum's own collection data

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About the sculpture

So stylized it is almost featureless, this statuette of a quadruped probably represents a horse. No facial features are indicated on its narrow, triangular head. The long neck gives way to a slender body. A faint raised ridge, possibly representing a mane, extends from the top of the head and down the neck to the shoulders. The four legs are proportionally very short, and the swelling on the rump may be the beginning of a tail. On the underside, just in front of the hind legs, male genitalia are modeled. This detail may reflect the significance of animal sexual potency, perhaps in the context of breeding.

Read on

Although a number of horse figurines are known, few come from archaeological contexts. Based on the prominence with which the horse is represented in the material culture of Luristan, these objects are generally attributed to this region. Collections and sale lots of objects primarily from Luristan often include horse figurines (1). It is likely, however, that the present understanding of the distribution of these figurines has been skewed by the horse’s prominence in Luristan, as parallels to this piece do not necessarily center on western Iran, with one example discovered as far north as Koban in the Caucasus (2). At the site of Marlik, in the Caspian basin of northwest Iran, several bronze horse figurines have been excavated, although mostly come from a single tomb (3). These figurines have long, slender necks and bodies, similar in form to the Harvard piece.

Also remarkable for their nearly identical proportion to the Harvard piece is a pair of copper alloy horses attached to a model wagon in a private collection (4). This model has been identified as “Middle Elamite” and dated to the first half of the second millennium BCE due to parallels between the cart and Old Babylonian examples from Mesopotamia. The Harvard horse is most likely part of the corpus of copper alloy figurines derived from Iron Age western Iran, from either Luristan or the Caspian basin.

NOTES:

1. J. M. Eisenberg, A Catalog of Luristan Bronzes and Early Islamic Pottery (New York, 1960) 14-16, pls. 8-9.

2. J. De Morgan, La préhistoire orientale 3: L’Asie antérieure (Paris, 1927) 327, fig. 336.10.

3. See E. O. Negahban, Marlik: The Complete Excavation Report, University Museum Monograph 87 (Philadelphia, 1996) 132-33, nos. 147-48, pl. 47.

4. F. Kußmaul, ed., Das Tier in der Kunst Irans, exh. cat., Linden-Museum, Stuttgart (Schorndorf, 1972) no. 11.

Amy Gansell

Harvard Art Museums