Deity of Bouray-Sur-Juine 1st C. BCE

May 28, 2020

Deity of Bouray-Sur-Juine 1st C. BCE - 1st C. CE

"The statuette was discovered around 1845 in the Juine river. The figure represented is a young, beardless naked man, sitting "cross-legged", wearing a torque around his neck. The arms, reported, are missing, but traces indicate that they rested on the thighs. The attention is drawn to the head, very disproportionate to the body, schematic. On the contrary, the head is treated in detail with great force mixed with refinement.

These characteristics come under the Gallic aesthetic, even if a Greco-Roman influence could be felt in the treatment of the hair. The identity of the character remains uncertain. Is it one of the very many Gallic Gods, whose name and powers are generally unknown, or a deified hero, or even an ancestor?

The head, formed of two cast lead bronze shells, is welded to the body, composed of two brass parts shaped by hammering. Blue and white glass eyes, of which only one remains, were placed in the head before assembly. The cast iron technique was undoubtedly retained by the bronzier who manufactured this statuette because it allowed him to render with much more quality and finesse the details of the head, essential in the Gallic aesthetics, than the would have hammered. The choice of appropriate techniques and alloys reveals the great mastery of metal craftsmen in Gaul.

The young man wears a closed torque hook and eye. At the end of the independence period and the beginning of the Gallo-Roman era, this rigid metal necklace from the Gauls was often worn by the native deities, either around the neck or by hand, as a divine attribute, which it seems to be.

The cross-legged pose is that of a number of indigenous Gods at the end of the independence era and the beginning of the Gallo-Roman era. This is how Cernunnos, the God with deer antlers, is represented. But some older stone statues from the south of France, representing warriors, perhaps deified, also adopt the same pose, which is not found in the Mediterranean world."

-taken from musee-archeologienationale.fr link below