Terracotta Oscilium of Demeter/Persephone
date: label: Accession Date
content: 14 Mar 1905
name: label: Donor Name
content: Elhanan W. Keyser
notes: label: Notes
content: Oscillum. Representation of Demeter / Persephone. Found at Cameiros. British Museum, 176. Representation of a veiled goddess, appearance of rising from the earth, connected it with the Persephone myth. These two goddesses ousted all other divinities from the underworld circle, and endowed with their own personality not only the feminine statuettes, but also the female masks (oscilla) which were hung on the walls of the tombs. In their origin these are derived from the Egyptian coffins, the upper part of which is moulded in the likeness of the head and shoulders of the dead. The Greeks, misled by their beardless faces, and knowing them only in rough Phenician copies, turned them into female busts, and adapted them to the representation of a veiled goddess, while in time their truncated form, which gave them the appearance of rising from the earth, connected them with the Persephone myth. (Hutton, Caroline Amy. Greek Terracotta Statuettes. The Macmillan Company, 1899, pg. 27-28, fig. 12, B. 176).
label: Record Last Modified
content: 8 Jan 2015
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Tanagra, Boeotia, Central Greece, Greece, Europe
topic: label: Topic
content: Archaeology
culture: label: Culture
content: Greek
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 044039
label: USNM Number
content: A232425-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Figure
physicalDescription: label: Height - Object
content: 13.34 cm
label: Width - Object
content: 9.7 cm
label: Depth - Object
content: 8 cm