The figure of a woman is linked by background with a columnar structure. Standing stiffly, she holds in her huge right hand a wiggling snake, the tail of which drags on the ground. She wears a chiton with six vertical central folds and a short Ionic himation with folds curving towards the center. There is no sign of the left arm hung down, hence it was probably bent and held on the chest (cf. Cat. 7, Cat. 20 Figs. 20, 78).

The upper garment and feet are closely paralleled in the Cheramyes-Geneleos group of Samian korai and the vertical folds of the chiton in the famous Ephesian “priestess” of ivory and on the Croesus column at Ephesus. The date is ca. 560 B.C., the style somewhat simplified and provincial. The stylistic links are perhaps with pre-Croesan Ephesus rather than Samian-Milesian.

That the figure stands in a shrine makes it more likely a goddess rather than a priestess or votary. Presumably, this is a votive, not a funerary monument. We do know which Sardian goddess had snakes as special attributes. If the argument presented below (see Cat. 7 Figs. 20-50) is correct, it might be a representation of Cybele; for a Hellenistic (?) image of a goddess with snake and globe cf. Cat. 193 (Fig. 343).

Plain pieces of wall adhering to the column at the right of the woman and to column fragments (Figs. 18-19) prove that the shrine had short, plain side walls and two three-quarter columns at the back as well as in the front. Taken at face value, the columns had tall rectangular pedestals or plinths, soft torus bases sprawling downward, and plain shafts. The capitals were possibly Ionic (see the reconstruction Figs. 17-18).

If the goddess is the same as Cat. 7, the shrine may be either a simplified representation of the same building or it might be an earlier stage of the same sanctuary, a smaller building with four corner columns. It is always difficult to know how far a model of a building can be trusted, but the order seems to belong to an experimental phase preceding the formation of the standard Ionic order in the Croesan Artemisium of Ephesus (ca. 560 B.C.).

Marble.

Seven joining fragments of lower body, legs, and r. hand of a woman holding a snake, of base and shaft of column on her r. and column base on her l. Six (?) additional fragments of three columns.