For those unfamiliar with this region, Faces of Ancient Arabia will be a revelation. Curated by Regine Schulz, curator of ancient art for the Walters, the exhibit shows that the South Arabian peninsula nurtured one of the world's most advanced early civilizations, comparable in many ways to ancient Greece or Turkey.
Ancient Arabia was a trading partner with Egypt, the civilizations of the Near East, and later, the Hellenistic and Roman empires. Its chief commercial goods were spices and fragrances, which were carried over land by domesticated, one-humped camels called dromedaries. Its people built the first known high dam, elaborate irrigation systems and towering, multi-story houses - some of the world's first skyscrapers. The region is thought by some to have been the domain of the legendary Queen of Sheba.
The Fosters' artifacts provide a glimpse at the life of upper-class people who lived from the sixth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D., a period when their civilization was at its peak. Many of the pieces show heads of men or women and were carved for display in temples or other burial places. Most were carved from calcite-alabaster, a cream-colored stone that is indigenous to the region and has a translucent quality.
Because they are so old and were typically recovered from excavations, the Fosters' artifacts are far from their original condition. Most have been worn down over the years and are missing arms and digits. They also have lost the paint that once highlighted eyes and lips, the way Egyptian hieroglyphics lose their color in the tombs, and inlaid glass and shell fragments used to accentuate eyebrows and moustaches. This absence of embellishment gives them the abstract quality Vikan refers to as "strangely modern looking." But there is still enough to see in most cases to understand how they once looked.
In the exhibit, many of the objects have simple descriptions, such as "Head of a Woman with Rectangular Face," or "Head of a Man with Moustache and Grumpy Face." A few of the stela - carved stone slabs often created as commemorative pieces - show more than just the head and neck. A piece titled "Stela with Female Bust" depicts a priestess with one arm upraised. "Stela with Representation of a Standing Woman" shows a female with an oversized head and small limbs; Schulz and Foster suggest that she may have been a dwarf. The most valuable piece in the collection, according to Foster, is "Fragment of a Pediment with Goddess," largely because it depicts a goddess rather than a human figure.
