Test your eye: Ancient Sumerian Masterpieces or Really Bad Fakes?

A friend just sent me an unsolicited email he received from a Serbian gentleman offering this pair of Sumerian terracotta statuettes allegedly excavated from "Babilon." 

In art, fakes are meant to intentionally deceive. But what this little pair lacks in resemblance to anything ancient, is made up for in the humor they invoke.  As if the combination of bountiful breasts, bizarre faces, garish hairstyles, stumpy proportions and nonsense inscriptions wasn't enough, the maker chose to embed a few rhinestones around the faces to give it that extra special bejeweled look. My American friends can relate to this analogy -- these figures are closer to the Brady Bunch Hawaiian idol than anything you'll find at the Metropolitan Museum.   

Fakes, of course, are serious business. In my opinion, good forgers make bad mistakes, but bad forgers make really bad forgeries. Perhaps this helps make the case.

If you wish to compare a truly ancient example, see this Sumerian worshiper in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, NY.

Comments

[Bron]

Hi John,

Yep, I was offered similar.
If not the identical ones, certainly from the same little workshop.

When one reples and gives a few reasons why they are actually very bad fakes and mentions that in any event one should not be buying such things without a sound paper trail of ligitmate provenance, one usualy gets very strange replies!

Cheers,
Bron.

[Bron]

More about such fakes acan be found by clicking on "Bron".

Cheers,
B

[John Ambrose]

Hi Bron,

Yes, I get my share of the same replies! Best regards.

John

[James]

I love necklaces too. I have a TON of them and most are just coumtse things too, and they are currently all tangled up. I used to have them on hooks on the inside of my closet door in the bathroom, but I haven't put them back up since we moved in to our new house the end of last year. I need to get to work on that!

[Egang]

They are learning from the best.Back in 1998, rvtaesentrpiees of the Walt Disney Company came to Washington looking for help. Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse, who made his screen debut in the 1928 cartoon short "Steamboat Willie," was due to expire in 2003, and Disney's rights to Pluto, Goofy and Donald Duck were to expire a few years later.Rather than allow Mickey and friends to enter the public domain, Disney and its friends - a group of Hollywood studios, music labels, and PACs representing content owners - told Congress that they wanted an extension bill passed.Prompted perhaps by the Disney group's lavish donations of campaign cash - more than $6.3 million in 1997-98, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics - Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.The CTEA extended the term of protection by 20 years for works copyrighted after January 1, 1923. Works copyrighted by individuals since 1978 got "life plus 70" rather than the existing "life plus 50". Works made by or for corporations (referred to as "works made for hire") got 95 years. Works copyrighted before 1978 were shielded for 95 years, regardless of how they were produced.Why should Disney have all the fun?At this point, I am assuming that when the new copyright terms run out in about a century or so, a new congress will extend them. Disney -> Copyrights in Perpetuity.

[Samantha]

I have to know who you are and care enough to read your uapetds...I may not have met you in real life, but I've met you online ... and have some common interest, background, etc. that makes me consider you an acquaintance. As an example, there are a couple of bloggers that are my FB friends...and we haven't 'met' irl but have exchanged emails, comments, etc.This rule does not apply for our business-related FB pages ... as long as you are interested in reading uapetds about our shop and aren't posting porn or spam...you can be our friend.

[Sintiia]

She didn't mean the photos were fake, I think.What I bleveie she meant was that she still doesn't comprehend the effects of her actions.Since she was too stupid to understand them for what they really were at the time, and that hasn't changed.I think she really bleveies that her propaganda shots weren't harmful to the US or our soldiers.Because she's delusional about it.