An ancient doll with a life of its own

Hull and East Riding Museum doesn’t just hold collections from the local area.  Some of our objects are from further afield and have made their way into our collections via collectors.  In this post we’re focusing on one of these objects: an articulated Ancient Greek ‘doll’.

'doll' from Athens, Greece;
Hull and East Riding Museum

This figurine was excavated from a child’s grave near Athens, Greece.  It dates to the Ancient Greek period and is over 2,000 years old!  It’s made from terracotta and was might have been painted, you can see from the picture it also has articulated limbs, so its arms and legs could move freely away from the body.  If you look carefully, you can see the hands are made as if they are gripping something.  These figures could have been dancers, as they are often discovered holding castanets or tambourines.  It’s possible our figurine also held an instrument which has been lost over time. 

The figurine also has a hole in its head, where it might have had a rod placed through to control its movement – so it could have been used in a similar way to a marionette, with its limbs manipulated so that it danced.

Our figurine was excavated from a child’s grave in Athens but was probably made in Corinth.  This is because the body is solid rather than hollow – and figurines with solid bodies are associated with Corinth (and hollow bodies with Greece).  It was possibly clothed when it was being used in the Ancient Greek World, however these would have decayed over time.

Figurines like this are often described as dolls.  This can be traced to an assumption based on an interpretation of an ancient written source where a girl gave her dolls as an offering to a goddess at a sanctuary.  However a more recent interpretation which is thought to be more accurate, suggests the girl gave her own hair and clothes.  Another argument against the ‘doll’ theory is the fragility of the figurines.  If they were regularly touched and played with by children, they wouldn’t have survived.

The archaeological evidence also suggests these ‘dolls’ might have been more than playthings too.  Excavations find them in the graves of adults as well as children, so it’s possible that they were charms placed in the grave to ward off evil spirits.  This has been backed up by the suggestion that the ‘dolls’ would have been hung up by their head (there are holes in the head where a string could have threaded through, so it could be suspended) and the freely moving arms and legs would have given the figure a life of its own.  The limbs clanking together might have been thought to ward of spirits and protect the owner or household.

This figurine or doll shows that although we can discover a lot about the ancient world, there are some things that still hold a little bit of mystery.

Further information:
Muratov, Maya B. “Greek Terracotta Figurines with Articulated Limbs.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gtal/hd_gtal.htm (October 2004)

Corinthian Terracotta jointed 'doll' at The Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/254514

Corinthian Terracotta doll at The British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=400059&partId=1&searchText=greek+doll&page=1

Corinthian Terracotta doll at The British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=411497&partId=1&searchText=greek+doll&page=1