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Lot Essay
The square mortise at the top of her head would suggest another part of a now missing larger headdress - probably a uraeus crown surmounted with a plumed sun-disc and cows horns representing Isis-Aphrodite.
The Louvre has a near-identical statue, illustrated in S. Reinach, Repertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, Paris, 1897, p. 359, no. 3, see also p. 360 nos 6 and 9. For a similar statue in the British Museum (no. 1912,0420.1) with the double layered fringe and a find spot in the Eastern Roman Empire, cf. C. Aug and P. L. de Bellefonds, 'Eros', Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologicae Classicae III, Zurich und München, 1986, p. 637, nos 352a and 352b, and LIMC no. 252e for a bronze statue with a similar dove headdress in the British Museum (no. ME 134875) where she is associated with Astarte, an ancient fertility goddess widely worshipped in Syria and Palestine. See also no. 107 in 'Aphrodite (In Peripheria Orientali)', Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologicae Classicae II, Zurich und München, 1986, for a bronze statue from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, with armlets where separately-made arms were attached and corkscrew curls on the shoulders.
The Louvre has a near-identical statue, illustrated in S. Reinach, Repertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, Paris, 1897, p. 359, no. 3, see also p. 360 nos 6 and 9. For a similar statue in the British Museum (no. 1912,0420.1) with the double layered fringe and a find spot in the Eastern Roman Empire, cf. C. Aug and P. L. de Bellefonds, 'Eros', Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologicae Classicae III, Zurich und München, 1986, p. 637, nos 352a and 352b, and LIMC no. 252e for a bronze statue with a similar dove headdress in the British Museum (no. ME 134875) where she is associated with Astarte, an ancient fertility goddess widely worshipped in Syria and Palestine. See also no. 107 in 'Aphrodite (In Peripheria Orientali)', Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologicae Classicae II, Zurich und München, 1986, for a bronze statue from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, with armlets where separately-made arms were attached and corkscrew curls on the shoulders.