Head from a Statue of Ur-Ningirsu, Ruler of Lagash

This stone statue, broken off below the neck, represents a man’s head. The eyes are almond-shaped and have thick lids. The eyebrows are also very thick, and meet on the bridge of the man’s nose. The nose is narrow and chipped at the tip. The philtrum is indicated by a shallow depression between the nose and upper lip. The lips are delicately modeled, and the mouth is slightly slanted. The cheeks are full, and the chin is rounded. The ears are rendered is low raised relief, and the ear canals are drilled. The man wears a hat with a tall, thick brim and a domed crown. The surface of the hat is covered with regular rows of raised curls. A row of curled hairs protrudes from under the hat on the back of the man’s neck. This head resembles the well-known statues of Gudea, ruler of Lagash in southern Mesopotamia c. 2100 BCE. However, it is a closer match to a statue of Gudea’s son and successor, Ur-Ningirsu (1). This chlorite statue was reconstructed from a body acquired by the Louvre in 1925, and a head acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1947; the body has an inscription identifying it as Ur-Ningirsu. Several features of Ur-Ningirsu’s face differ from the many representations of his father: the comparatively angular face, the slender nose, the modeled philtrum, and the thick, almost pouty, lower lip. These features are all present in the Harvard Art Museums’ head, and it stands to reason this head is also an image of Ur-Ningirsu. The Metropolitan Museum and Harvard heads are also of similar sizes. Finally, the Harvard head was purchased by Grenville Winthrop from Joseph Brummer in 1932, from whom the Metropolitan Museum acquired its Ur-Ningirsu head. Brummer purchased both heads from Elias S. David in 1925. David’s source is unknown; however, the French excavators of Tello (ancient Girsu), where many of the Gudea statues were found, were apparently shown by local people the exact spot on the site where several statues, including the Louvre’s statue of Ur-Ningirsu, were illicitly dug up in 1924 (2). It is of course quite impossible to say whether or not the Harvard head was among these. It is also possible that the head is a modern forgery (3). NOTES: 1. Metropolitan Museum of Art 47.100.86 and Louvre AO 9504; see J. Aruz (ed.), Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus (New York, 2003) no. 307. 2. H. de Genouillac, Fouilles de Tello, vol. II: époques d’Ur IIIe dynastie et de Larsa (Paris, 1936) 17-19. 3. As suggested by F. Johansen, Statues of Gudea Ancient and Modern (Copenhagen, 1978) 40. On the difficulties of identifying forgeries of Gudea statues on stylistic (and epigraphic) grounds, see O. W. Muscarella, “Gudea or Not Gudea in New York and Detroit: Ancient or Modern?” Source: Notes in the History of Art 24.2 (2005) 6-18.