ARCHAIC PERIOD, CIRCA LATE 6TH CENTURY B.C.

Edwin Henry Lawrence F.S.A (1819-91) was an accomplished London-based stockbroker who amassed a substantial collection of Egyptian and Cypriot antiquities during his lifetime. The Cypriot antiquities were predominantly collected or excavated in Cyprus between 1876 and 1878 by his future son-in-law Alessandro Palma di Cesnola.
Between 1883 and 1888, as well as after his death in 1892, his items were sold at Sotheby's as part of the Lawrence-Cesnola collection. Material from these sales entered numerous museums and private collections around the world, including large numbers acquired by Pitt-Rivers for his First and Second Pitt-Rivers collection.
This beardless male votary is depicted in the Archaic style with a faint smiling expression and elongated eyes, surmounted by arching eyebrows, merging from the edges of the nose. His hairstyle consists of rows of symmetrical curls on the forehead, held by a thin headband and straight locks on top of the head. The head recalls stylistic traditions of the kouros, which were being produced in the Greek world during the same period. Cf. Cat.104 in A. Hermay and J.R. Mertens, The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art: Stone Sculpture, for a similar example.