4th-3rd millennium BC. An alabaster figure with flat triangular body, short neck supporting a pair of wide discoid openwork eyes. See parallel idols in the Metropolitan Museum, accession no.1988.323.8; the British Museum, excavated by Professor Six Max Edgar Lucien Mallowan, inv. nos.126473, 126477 and 126479; see also Collon, D., Ancient Near Eastern Art, London, 1995, p.47, for type; for the discussion on Tell Brak, their iconography and the religious meaning of eye idols, see Green, J.B. & T.R., Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, An illustrated dictionary, London, 1992, pp.78-79. 301 grams, 11cm (4 1/4"). Property of a London gentleman; before that in the private collection of a Kensington collector; previously in the collection of Mrs Petra Schamelman, Breitenbach, Germany; acquired from the collection of Fernand Adda, formed in the 1920s; accompanied by an archaeological expertise by Dr. Raffaele D’Amato; this lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD certificate number no.10773-178136. This type of figurine is known as an ‘eye idol’ or ‘spectacle idol’, made of stone, marble or alabaster. Usually having incised eyes (but also examples of open eyes are known), mainly excavated at Tell Brak, where thousands were found in a building now called the Eye Temple. In the precincts of this temple, excavators have found thousands of little 'eye-idols', schematised humanoid figures fashioned from alabaster, limestone, soapstone and black burnished clay. They were probably dedicated there as offerings and are mainly dated to the 4th-3rd millennium BC (Late Uruk period"). The eyes of this idol were not incised, as in the main Tell Brak models, but originally infilled with stone eyes then probably coloured with black or green paint.