AN ELAMITE COPPER FIGURE OF A HORNED HERO , PROTO-LITERATE PERIOD, CIRCA 3000-2800 B.C.

striding with his right clenched hand extended and his left clenched hand held to his abdomen, and wearing shoes with horn-shaped boots, broad rounded belt, cape in the form of the protecting wings and tail of a vulture, and round-brimmed cap surmounted by the horns and ears of an ibex, his face with long spade-shaped beard, straight nose, and grooved eyebrows.

reportedly found at Telloh
private collection, Baghdad
Mrs. Paul Mallon, New York, acquired from her in 1950

"Ancient Bronzes," Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, 1954
"Director’s Choice," Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida, 1955

E. Schenck, "Two Near-Eastern Figurines," Gallery Notes, January 1953, pp. 2-5
J.F. Haskins, "Shamanistic Figures from the Caucasus," Marsyas, Vol. 7, 1957, pp. 40-52
André Parrot, "Statuaire archaïque iranienne," Syria, Vol. 40, 1963, p. 235
Richard David Barnett, "Homme masqué ou dieu-ibex?," Syria, Vol. 43, 1966, pp. 259-276, pl. XXI
W. Nagel, "Frühe Grossplastik und die Hochkulturkunst am Erthaischen Meer," Berliner Jahrbuch, Vol. 6, 1966, p. 46; Vol. 7, 1968, p. 116, pl. XXVI
Jutta Börker-Klähn, "Drei unveröffentliche Plastiken im Rijksmuseum van Oudheden zu Leiden," Oudheidkundige Mededelingen, Vol. 55, 1974, p. 121, pl. 20
Edith Porada, "Mesopotamia und Iran," Propyläen Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 1974, p. 163, pl. XII
Steven A. Nash, with Katy Kline, Charlotta Kotik and Emese Wood, Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942, New York, 1979, pp. 50-51 (illustrated)
Agnès Spycket, La statuaire du Proche-Orient ancien, Leiden and Cologne, 1981, p. 49, note
Peter Roger Stuart Moorey, "The Archaeological Evidence for Metallurgy and Related Technologies in Mesopotamia, c. 5500-2100 B.C.," Iraq, Vol. 44, 1982, p. 24
Edith Porada, Man and Images in the Ancient near East, Wakefield, R.I. and London, 1995, p.35
Holly Pittman, in Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, Joan Aruz, ed., catalogue of the exhibition, New Haven and London, 2003, pp. 46-48 (illustrated)

An almost identical figure, with the same provenance, in the Guennol Collection, New York, is discussed alongside the present example in Schenck 1953, Barnett 1966, and Pittman 2003, and also published in Ancient Art in American Private Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1954, No. 72, pl. XXII, Ann Farkas, Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me, New York, 1964, No. 7, and Ida Ely Rubin, ed., The Guennol Collection, New York, 1975, pp. 33-37.

In reference to the figure in the Guennol Collection Dr. Porada (op.cit., 1995, pp.33-34) writes that this "heavy figure seems to stand weightlessly on shoes with upturned tips that are characteristic of those worn by Near Eastern mountain peoples as in a cylinder seal of about 3000 B.C. from Nineveh in the British Museum, though the shoes are greatly exagerated in the figure, suggesting the figure's magically speedy advance."