Head of a Kore

The head of a slightly smaller than half life-size kore (the Greek word for “maiden”) is rendered with delicate features and an elaborate coiffure. Her hair is arranged with a row of spit-curls along the forehead and a series of vertical waves over the front of the head. At the back it is long and dressed in horizontal rows. The kore wears a prominent diadem around her head, and her lobes are adorned with large disc earrings. Traces of red pigment appear in the hair, and the right earring is marked with an x-shaped design in blue, which now appears dark gray from aging. Details of the eyes, such as lids, irises, and pupils, would have originally been added in paint as well. The style of this head, with its almond-shaped eyes and a hairstyle of wavy curls with spiral terminals, resembles korai produced during the Archaic period in Athens and the surrounding area of Attica. In the Archaic period, statues of fashionably dressed and carefully coiffed young women were erected as dedications to the gods in sanctuaries, or less frequently, functioned as grave markers. Korai range in date from between about 675 and 490 B.C. Modern scholars took the ancient Greek word kore as the name for this type of statue, since an unmarried, but physically developed young woman is represented. Statues of this type were produced in various cities on the Greek mainland such as Athens, Eleusis, and Thebes. They were also erected on many Greek islands, including Delos, Paros, Naxos, Chios, Samos, and Andros, among others. The majority of korai found to date have been in sanctuaries of various female deities, such as Hera, Artemis, Demeter, and Athena. Of particular value in the study of statues of this kind are the over 50 examples found on the Athenian Acropolis that were buried soon after the Persian sack of the city in 480 B.C. In addition to the sculptural remains found on the Acropolis, a series of approximately 300 inscribed stone bases for votive statues were also discovered.