Terracotta figurine of a Nubian mercenary wearing trousers & a tunic, armed with a double axe, carrying a shield. He could be serving in the Ptolemaic army, or as a Roman auxiliary. Made in Egypt during the Ptolemaic period, c. 220 BCE-180 BCE.

Citation: Courtesy of the British Museum, Asset no. 364406001. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Two terracotta figurines of boxers. Possibly made & found in Italy. Roman, late Hellenistic/mid-late Republican periods, ca. 2nd c. BCE – 1st c. BCE.

Citation: Image courtesy of the British Museum, Greek and Roman dept, items 1852.4-1.1 (left), 1852.4-1.2. (right). © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Terracotta figure of an actor or priest with weight on his/her left leg. From Smyrna, Asia Minor (modern Turkey, city of Izmir). Hellenistic period, ca. 2nd c. BCE – 1st c. BCE. The figure’s sex is hard to determine, which may be deliberate.

Citation: Image courtesy of © The Trustees of the British Museum. Asset no. 27527001. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Figure of a seated man with a scroll. Terracotta. Apulian (Greek). Made & found in Puglia, Italy. Hellenistic period, ca. 300 BCE-200 BCE.

Citation: Image courtesy of the British Museum, Greek and Roman dept. Asset no. 854102001. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Terracotta figure of man with box on a mule. Greek, made in Corinth. Found in Athens(?); Classical period, ca. 450 BCE. (No.1873,0820.575)

Citation: Image courtesy of the British Museum, Greek and Roman dept. Asset no. 1505084001. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Basalt statuette of a young flute player(?). Hellenistic or Ptolemaic period, c. 3rd-1st c. BCE. From Alexandria, Egypt.

Citation: Image courtesy of Dan Diffendale, taken on March 19,2023 at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens (Egyptian collection, Inv. 22). CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Bronze figurines of fettered, captive men. Acquired in Cairo, Egypt; Hellenistic period, ca. 3rd-1st c. BCE.

Citation: Photo courtesy of Dan Diffendale, taken on November 24th, 2019 in the Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany; Berlin Antikensammlung inv. Misc. 10486 (left), Misc. 10485 (right). CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Head of a man. Terracotta figurine from Egypt. Greco-Roman period, c. 332 BCE – 337 CE.

Citation: Image courtesy of the Världskultur Museerna Medelhavet (World Culture Museums, Mediterranean), Stockholm (Inv. MM30761). CC BY 4.0

Enthroned Goddess (Astarte?). Limestone statuette, possibly a cult image from an Astarte temple. From Cyprus (Kition?); Archaic period, ca. 599-550 BCE. The goddess Astarte was the ‘Great Mother’ of the Phoenicians & Canaanites (tied to fertility, love, war, death, & the night sky), becoming part of the Egyptian pantheon between the 16th – 13th centuries BCE. A Phoenician presence on Cyprus dates back to the 9th c. BCE (especially at the city-kingdom Kition). Cyprus constantly interacted with the nearby Phoenician, Greek, Egyptian, & Levantine cultures. This statuette fuses Greek, Cypriot, & Eastern styles: her head design is archaic Greek; her ear-rings & necklace are Cypriot; the winged sphinx-attendant flanking her throne is eastern.

Citation: Image courtesy of the the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; on view in room X of the Collection of Classical Antiquities (Antikensammlung Inv. # I 1548). ©KHM-Museumsverband (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).