Ancient artifacts recovered around the Mediterranean at the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology in Marseille, France

Ancient artifacts recovered around the Mediterranean at the Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology in Marseille, France.

Museum of Mediterranean Archaeology in Marseille houses the most important ensemble of Egyptian art in France after the Louvre.  Their Egyptian collections offer a thematic presentation of daily life, cults and funerary rites from prehistory to the second century CE. The classical collections offer a geographical and chronological discovery of the Middle East, with Assyrian coins and objects from Nineveh, Greece, Rome, Cyprus, Etruria and Gaul, from the fourth millennium to the third century CE including  Cycladic vases, a remarkable Minoan oenochoe (fifteenth century BCE), Corinthian perfume vases decorated with animal or floral prints, ceramics, a black figure vessel with a red face , a kouros, and Etruscan and Roman bucchero ware, bronze objects, children's toys, a Venus marble, and glassware.


Image: Doll in a sitting position, articulated arms. Female character with curly hair trapped in a cap. This doll was made to be dressed because it is not attached to a seat.  Although the build is identical to that of Attic dolls, the awkward treatment of the shoulders and lower limbs, the thighs together, and the detached legs, would indicate production of a workshop in Asia Minor or Boeotia.   6th - 10th century CE.  Often found in tombs of girls, they were also dedicated as votive offerings, usually to Artemis, after marriage, representing passage from the life of a girl to a woman.

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