Introduction to Judean Pillar Figurines
Judean pillar figurines are clay female statuettes found within the boundary of southern Israel in the eighth through sixth centuries (figs. 1-3). They generally consist of a separately molded headdress and face, joined to the body by a clay tab that is smoothed over by hand.
The bodies most commonly contain arms holding or supporting the breasts placed atop a solid pillar base. Another version of the figurines has a hand-pinched head made in tandem with the body. A small number of figurines hold a disc or a child, and minor variations in production technique also occur, such as wheel-formed or hollow pillar bases. Judean pillar figurines were also whitewashed and painted, though these elements are badly preserved on most fragments.Despite the difficulty understanding JPFs, they are one of the most prevalent iconographic “religious” images found within the boundaries of Judah, the polity governing southern Israel in the Iron IIB-IIC. They come from almost every site in the country, with over five hundred from Jerusalem alone. Even more interesting, this image is never discussed anywhere in the Hebrew Bible (Lewis 2005, 87; Darby 2014, 259-97).
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