Cleveland Museum of Art

Anthropomorph

Date

c. 1500–1000 BCE

Medium

copper

Culture

India, Bronze Age

Department

Indian and Southeast Asian Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Among the few works of art known from the first millennium BC in India, anthropomorphs such as this fine example have an abstract formal appeal, but their meaning and function remain mysterious. They were made during the approximately 1,500-year long period of time between the protohistoric Indus Valley civilization, which flourished between about 2,800–1,800 BC, and the Maurya period (322–187 BC), when works of art must have been made in perishable materials that no longer survive. Most of these mysterious objects were discovered in the plain regions of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers of northern India.

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