Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Female Figure
Not on view
This terracotta figurine was recovered from a site now tentatively identified as Kumbi Saleh, the capital of ancient Ghana. Created during a prosperous period, it was fashioned from humble clay into a highly evocative bodily form that likely pays tribute to a woman’s reproductive power. While nothing is known of the figure’s original patronage or use, its find-spot in a layer of rubble and its fragmentary state suggest that it was discarded by the later generation of an urban center in transition.
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