The Eyes Have It: An In-Depth Study of the Tell Brak Eye Idols in the 4th Millennium BCE: with a primary focus on function and meaning

Abstract

Age has often been mistaken as an indication of simplicity in design, style and artistic technique in artefacts, but this is not the case when applied to the Eye-Idols from Tell Brak. Eye-Idols were first discovered by Professor M.E.L Mallowan during the 1937 and 1938 spring excavations of Tell Brak in north Syria. The Eye-Idols have been dated to the Early to Middle Northern Uruk period. They were found mainly in the Grey Eye-Temple Complex, which gained its name from these unique artefacts found in large numbers within. They appear to have been offerings deposited in a procedure of ritual discard, but the true meaning, function and cultic value of these unusual artefacts remains elusive and undetermined. In his original 1947 Excavation Report, Mallowan describes the discovery of thousands of Eye-Idols in an assortment of sizes and designs, but today the location of only a small number is known. Only on the most superficial level is the artefact type an example of a simple or basic design; instead they are purposely abstract and simple in their stylised representation of what is a possible human form. There is extensive archaeological evidence across northern and southern Mesopotamia from the Late Chalcolithic and into the Uruk period showing that artisans had the artistic and technical ability to construct and reproduce accurate and detailed examples of the human figure and face, but in the case of the Eye-Idols, the choice of simplicity is clearly deliberate. This study undertakes a more thorough analysis of the artefact type through the utilisation of scholarly texts, museum collections, recent excavations in Northern Mesopotamia and a hands-on study of the Nicholson Museum’s Collection of Eye-Idols. This has been done to better understand the value, meaning and importance of these small, apparently unassuming, but nevertheless complex artefacts, and the insights they reveal about those who created and used them.