• r2-40-1
    Lower part of archaic siren, front. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)
  • r2-40-2
    Lower part of archaic siren, back. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)
  • r2-40-3
    Lower part of archaic siren, side. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Lower Part of Archaic Siren

Date
530-500 BC, Late Lydian (Persian)
Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
S10.004
Material
Marble, Stone
Object Type
Sculpture
Sculpture Type
Animal, Siren
Site
Sardis
Findspot
Discovered in 1971 among fragments found by first Sardis expedition and recognized as archaic by I. Hanfmann.
Description

Going all around from sex to tail are rows of downward-pointed feathers stylized in leaf-like shapes. Each leaf is oval with median rib. Two vertical rows fill out the triangle between the side feathers and tail on the proper l. They are somewhat better preserved on the r. leg but the transition to the tail is managed somewhat differently. The sex is soft and well rounded. The tail feathers increase in W. from 0.02 at the sides to 0.03 at the central feathers. The visible L. of the feathers is consistently 0.10. On the l. side the join with the tail makes a triangle; under it the slightly incised smaller feathers continue vertically downward. The same occurs on the r., but a piece is broken out. The contour of the tail comes out of the back in a neat and concave curve. The tail is quite short and wide, like a hen's, rounded at the lower edge. There is not enough left to ascertain the posture; she might have held a musical instrument like the marble siren in Copenhagen or the lyre-playing “royal” siren on a seal found in Tomb 24 (excavated by the first Sardis expedition) at Sardis.

An ivory plaque from Ephesus is ancestral to our siren; its siren has a dense patterning of feathers on the legs and chest. The date is not before the late 7th C. (Kunze, Sirenen, 128, fig. 2; Buschor, Musen, 16, fig. 9). The Eastern Greek marble siren in Copenhagen, ca. 550-540 B.C. (ibid., 42, figs. 31-32) lacks the dense surface detailing. Closest perhaps are the sirens of the red-figure Odysseus vase in the British Museum (ibid., 51f. fig. 39). As Buschor observed, they are “from father’s times,” intentionally archaic, and our siren cannot be dated by the date of the vase. The style of the Sardis siren is, in fact, late archaic. The linear stylization of the tail feathers would permit an earlier date, ca. 580 B.C. (P. Amandry, Fouilles de Delphes II, 28-32), but the sense of softness and rounded flesh is more likely to occur around 500 B.C. (cf. the limestone owl in Berlin, A 10, C. Blümel, Griechische Skulpturen, 10, pl. 21). Nearest in Lydia is a bird at the museum at Tire.

Dimensions
P.H. of back 0.26, of front 0.18. W. at top 0.30. L. of tail 0.17; W. 0.19 at top, ca. 0.15 at bottom.
Comments
For “royal” siren see Sardis XIII, 41, no. 107, “bearded male harpy,” pl. 11; Boardman, Pyramidal Seals, 40, nos. 28-30, pl. 3, also cites flower-sniffing and bow-drawing sirens on seals attributed to Sardis. For Sirens on vases see Weicker, Seelenvogel, 122, fig. 47. Payne, Neocorinthia, 177; Maksimova, Vases Plastiques, 145ff., pl. 29:110; Kunze, Sirenen, 127f., who cite Ionian and Corinthian plastic vases. For a good description of the meaning of sirens see J. Pollard, Seers, Shrines, and Sirens, 137-145.
See Also
Bibliography
Author
GMAH