Miniature Canaanite Bronze Smiting Figure

Near East, Levant, Canaanite culture. A diminutive bronze figure stands with legs apart and arms flung wide, elbows bent so that closed fists rise level with the shoulders beneath a tall conical cap tapering to a point. The modeling is summary: flattened torso, tubular limbs, pinched tapering feet, and only the barest suggestion of eyes and nose under a green and earthen surface. The raised arms recall the vocabulary of the Levantine "smiting god," a deity brandishing mace or axe, though no weapon or socket survives here and the gesture reads equally as blessing or acclamation. Votive images of this scale were dedicated in temples and household shrines across Bronze Age Syria-Palestine, small enough to carry, cheap enough to give, and potent enough to stand for the worshipper before the god. The smiting god type is among the most durable images in Levantine religion, attested in metal figurines from Ugarit, Byblos, Megiddo, and Hazor across the second millennium BCE. Its canonical form shows a striding male, one arm raised to strike with mace or axe, the other extended with shield, spear, or offering, wearing the tall conical or white crown that scholars associate with Baal, Reshef, and related storm and war deities. Many surviving examples preserve pin holes or tangs where a separate weapon was fitted, and gilding traces on the finer castings indicate the type circulated at a wide range of price points, from temple dedications sheathed in gold leaf to plain, quickly finished pieces made for ordinary petitioners. Worth noting is how the type resists a single reading. The upraised arm is the strike of the warrior god, but the same posture, doubled and symmetrical as it is here, belongs also to the gesture of adoration and to the "orant" figures of worshippers found in Near Eastern sanctuaries. Where the fists are empty and no attachment point survives, the figure hovers between god and devotee, and the ambiguity may well have been useful to whoever dedicated it. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 204582

Estimation:€357.36

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