Expensive Ancient Statues at Auction

In 2002 the sale of the statue broke the world auction record for an antiquity sale (of that time) after selling for nearly $12 million at Christie’s London.

The Jenkins Venus: $11.7 Million. The Jenkis Venus, also known as the Barberini Venus is a copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos statue, which is was one of the most famous works of Praxiteles, an ancient Greek sculptor. Considered the most important Cycladic idol ever to come to auction, the Cycladic reclining female figure with an estimated value of $3-5 million, was sold by Christie’s for a jaw-dropping almost $17 million in December of 2010.

Bronze Figure Of A Tapir: $12 Million. This bronze figure is a preeminent example of Chinese figurines of the 4th century B.C. The bronze figure portrayed a pig-like mammal that became extinct in China about 10,000 years ago. The statue depicting Leda and the swan was discovered around 1775 in Rome, and is a Roman replica of a Greek statue from about 300 B.C. The statue was sold by Sotheby’s New York for over $19 million.

The sculpture, ‘Roman Bust of Antinous’, was sold by Sotheby’s in 2010 for almost $24 million.

Artemis and the Stag: $28.6 Million. Artemis and the Stag, was the highest priced statue ever sold at the time (2007).

Found near Baghdad, Iraq, the Guennol Lioness is a 5,000-year-old limestone Mesopotamian statue. The sculpture was described by Sotheby’s as “one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands.” The sculpture portrays an anthropomorphic lioness-woman and was sold for $57.2 million in 2007

$ 60k to $ 90k

On December 8, 2015 Sotheby's presented a sale dedicated to ancient Egyptian sculpture and works of art, the first auction of its kind in recent memory. Highlights include a fine small-scale basalt bust of King Tuthmosis III, an imposing over-lifesize fragmentary red granite head of King Amenhotep III from the last ten years of his reign, and a monumental granite enthroned figure of the goddess Sekhmet, once the property of John Lennon

Black Basalt Head Of Tuthmosis III, 18th Dynasty, 1479-1426 B.C. $200k to $ 300k

Wood mask with inlaid eyes, 25th/26th Dynasty. $ 300k to $ 500k

Limestone mask, 30th Dynasty/early Ptolemaic Period. $200k to $ 300k

Granite enthroned figure of the goddess Sekhmet. $ 3m to $ 5m

Statuette of the Lady Iset , priestess of the god Sobek, dating to the early 19th Dynasty. $600k to $ 900k

A record for an ancient Egyptian work of art was set at Christie’s in 2012 when a 29 inch sculpture of the goddess, Isis, dating from the Late Period Dynasty, c 664 - 525 BC, sold for £3.7 million.

A 30-inch statue representing the god Sekhemka broke the world record for highest auction price of an Egyptian artwork in 2014. The statue was estimated to sell for $7 to $11 million, but sold for $27 million. The Sekhemka statue is a tomb model of a high official, wearing a short kilt and tight-fitting wig, surrounded by his wife, son and seven offering-bearers. He holds a papyrus on his knees on which are inscribed a list of offerings designed to serve the needs of the dead, including beer and cakes.

An Egyptian Green Peridotite Head of a Man Egyptian blue-glazed steatite figure of Taweret, goddess of childbirth

Block statue of a man and the sacred baboon of Thoth, Egyptian, serpentine, 26th/30th Dynasty, 664-342 B.C. Sold for $856,000 in 2006

Sphinx of Egyptian queen, green porphry, Roman Imperial, circa A.D. 81-96. $5,234,500.

Egyptian steatite figure of Sobek

Djehuty-Mose (Tothmes), polychrome limestone ushabti, Egyptian 19th Dynasty,1292-1190 B.C. $1,314,500

Black granite or basalt relief fragment from the 30th Dynasty/Early Ptolemaic Period, reign of Nectanebo II /Ptolemy I, 360-282 B.C. $211,500 in 1998

Limestone figure of lion, 30th Dynasty/Ptolemaic Period, 380-30 B.C. $154,250 in 2001.

‘Alien boy’ found in 2,000-year-old Crimean tomb was a trainee Sarmatian fighter

An "alien boy" with a weirdly elongated skull found in a tomb in Crimea was in fact a trainee ancient warrior, say archeologists. Elongated skulls were traditional for the Sarmatian culture. The artificially elongated skull was a sign of a "true warrior". The deformation process began early in childhood when the bones were still soft, and no surgery was needed. Special wooden planks were tied to the skull, pressing the bones and gradually altering the shape. The boy warrior from the second century AD is believed to have been aged between 18 months and two years old when he died.

DNA reveals fate of the mysterious Canaanites

When the pharaohs ruled Egypt and the ancient Greeks built their first cities, a mysterious people called the Canaanites dominated the Near East. Around 4000 years ago, they built great cities, yet they left no surviving written records, leaving researchers to piece together their history. One of those sources is the Bible’s Old Testament, which suggests a grisly end for many Canaanites: After the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, God ordered them to destroy Canaan and its people. Ancient DNA recovered from five Canaanite skeletons suggests that they survived to contribute their genes to millions of people living today. The new samples come from Sidon, a coastal city in Lebanon.

Scientists found that the present-day Lebanese population is largely descended from the ancient Canaanites, inheriting more than 90% of their genes from this ancient source.

Mint Ptolemy IV Mnaieion

A superb gold mnaieion of Ptolemy IV honoring his father Ptolemy III. In mint state, it realized $24,675. Mnaieions are among the most rare and desirable ancient gold coins. Ptolemaic gold mnaieions were one of the larger ancient gold denominations struck. They had a considerable face value of one mina, or 100 drachms.  An extremely rare ancient gold coin was uncovered at Tell Kedesh in Israel near its Lebanese border in 2010. It is the heaviest gold coin with the highest contemporary value of any coin ever found in an excavation in Israel. The coin weighs almost one ounce (27.71 grams), while most ancient gold coins weighed 4.5 grams.

Divining the will of the Gods

Clay model of a sheep’s liver used for instruction in liver divination in a Babylonian Temple School, c. 2000 B.C.

The ancient world offered up a myriad of ways of telling the future and divining the will of the gods. In second-millennium B.C. Mesopotamia, professional oracle-priests would ritually sacrifice an animal and read the it's entrails (a process called extispicy). The priests chose to inspect and evaluate a sacrificed animal’s liver, which was deemed the location of the soul and number-one site for all internal activity. Divining by inspecting the liver was called hepatomancy.

In Ancient Rome, a haruspex was a person trained to practice this form of divination. On behalf of the person who brought the animal to the temple, the priests asked the gods a question; the gods inscribed the answer in the entrails. Over the centuries, liver models became popular across the ancient Near East, from Assyria to Babylonia, Anatolia to Cyprus. Rich kings often split up his multiple diviners into groups so they couldn’t conspire to lie to him. It was common for kings to order omens until they got the answer they wanted.

Treasures From the Ancient City of Teotihuacan

One of the most significant archaeological sites in the world will take center stage at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) this fall with the de Young Museum’s “Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire.” The exhibition features over 200 artifacts and artworks from the site, with loans from major collections in Mexico as well as recently excavated objects.

At its zenith Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population estimated at 125,000 or more, making it at least the sixth largest city in the world during its epoch. At 63 meters tall, the Sun Pyramid was one of the largest and tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere. The city reached its peak around 450 AD.

Great Goddess of Teotihuacan

Water Goddess; from Teotihuacán

Ifrit Monsters

Ifrit are supernatural creatures in some Middle Eastern stories. In Islam, this term refers to the most powerful and dangerous Jinns. The Ifrits are a class of infernal spirits, classified as a jinn and also held to be a death spirit drawn to the life-force (or blood) of a murdered victim seeking revenge on the murderer. As with ordinary jinn, an Ifrit may be either a believer or an unbeliever, good or evil, but it is most often depicted as a wicked, ruthless and evil being; a powerful Shaitan (demon). According to Islamic sources, the ifrit has a fiery appearance with leaping flames from his mouth. In early folklore, the ifrit is said to be formed from the blood of a murder victim. Driving an unused nail into the blood was supposed to stop their formation. The creatures were reported as being able to take the form of Satan, the murder victim, or even a sandstorm. Ifrits are believed to inhabit the underworld, or in desolated places like ruins or caves.

Crack China’s ancient riddle of the bones for big cash rewards

A picture may be worth a thousand words but one mysterious ancient Chinese character could be a 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) payday for anybody who can definitively say what it means. The National Museum of Chinese Writing in Anyang, Henan province, has issued a worldwide appeal for help to decipher thousands of esoteric characters cut into bones and shells dating back more than 3,000 years to the Shang dynasty. The inscriptions are the earliest written records of Chin­ese civilization and shed light on life and society at the time. They were carved by fortune-tellers on turtle shells and ox shoulder blades known as oracle bones, and record questions on everything from weather to taxes.

So far, scholars have managed to crack the code to less than half of the roughly 5,000 characters found on excavated oracle bones. Around 3,000 of them remain a mystery. The museum is encouraging researchers to use cloud computing and big data to generate breakthroughs. The museum started offering the rewards because progress on deciphering the characters had stalled in recent years. For researchers studying the ancient Chinese texts, making sense of one character can be a career-defining achievement.

Peru reconstructs face of Lord of Sipan

Peruvian authorities have revealed the reconstructed face of the Lord of Sipan, a pre-Columbian ruler whose remains were discovered in 1987 and hailed as one of the country's most stunning archaeological finds. A full body representation of the ancient ruler, believed to have died around the year 250, was unveiled Thursday at the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipan in the northern city of Chiclayo.

The Moche culture ruler's face was reconstructed by anthropologists based on the skull and facial bones of the man's mummy. Archaeologists discovered the mummy buried with a large cache of gold and silver in the Huaca Rajada adobe pyramid complex. Experts believe the Lord of Sipan was between the age of 45 and 55 when he died.

Tomb of the Lord of Sipan in Chiclayo, Peru

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