Cremation Urn (Primary Title)
Unknown (Artist)
Ceramic urns like this one were made by a Protohistoric group, now known as the Gandhara Grave Culture, that once inhabited the remote valleys of present-day northwest Pakistan. The simple, stylized face on the vessel's side may be an abstract representation of the person whose cremated remains it was intended to hold. Filled with these ashes and possibly some funerary objects, the urn and its saucer-shaped lid would have been buried in a grave.
Gandhara Grave Culture
Protohistoric period
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund
Dye, Joseph M. The Arts of India: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Philipp Wilson Publishers, 2001. (no 1, p 83)
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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