Torso of a Statuette

In modern museum installations the standard Cycladic statuettes are always shown as standing, but their poses, even when complete from head to toe, suggest they were made to be shown stretched out on a flat surface, as if laid out for a "wake." To be sure, the flutists, the seated harpers, and the paired figures supporting a third smaller image between them are rarer illustarations of standing and seated postures, but the awkward construction of most "idols" is not a sign of primitivism but a product of ritual uses. Since the giant statuettes, almost stuatues, were broken across the bottoms of the neck and the legs at the knees for placing in small, rectangular tombs, the figures were clearly created for some other purpose and afterward interred with the deceased (Vermeule, C., 1971, pp. 37-38, fig. 46; Vermeule, E., 1964, pp. 56-58).

They were not gods, goddesses, or votaries, like statues on Cyprus from the early archaic period when Near Eastern influence was at its height onward, since they are not found in shrines. It seems logical, therefore, that they played a part in cermonies of passage to another life and were then laid in tombs as they had been laid out ceremonially above ground.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer