Indus Valley Civilization, ca. 2600-1900 BC. The humped bull standing foursquare, its head with large eyes, a short muzzle, and long curved horns, the animal further modeled with a tail. The eyes, horns, neck, and back encircled by brown-painted stripes.

Provenance: From the collection of Paolo Bertuzzi (1943-2022), who was a fashion stylist from Bologna, Italy. He was the son of Enrichetta Bertuzzi, founder of Hettabretz, a noted Italian fashion company with customers such as the Rothschild family, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. Paolo Bertuzzi later took over his mother’s business and designed exclusive pieces, some of which were exhibited in the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. He was also an avid collector of antiques for more than 60 years. His collection includes both archaic and contemporary art, and he edited two important books about Asian art, Goa Made - An Archaeological Discovery, about a large-scale archaeological project carried out with the Italian and Indonesian governments, and Majapahit, Masterpieces from a Forgotten Kingdom.
Condition: Good condition, commensurate with age. Extensive wear, minuscule nicks, minor smoothened losses, expected old fills and repairs, signs of weathering and erosion, and encrustations.

Weight: 651.4 g
Dimensions: Length 16 cm

The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age culture in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilizations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread. Its sites spanned an area from northeast Afghanistan and much of Pakistan to western and northwestern India. The civilization flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The cities of the ancient Indus were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and techniques of handicraft and metallurgy. Both Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa likely grew to a size of 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and the civilization may have contained between one and five million total population during its florescence. It is also known as the Harappan civilization, after its type site Harappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now Punjab, Pakistan. The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards Mohenjo-Daro was the culmination of work that had begun after the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj in 1861. There were earlier and later cultures called Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area. The early Harappan cultures were populated by Neolithic civilizations, the earliest and best-known of which is Mehrgarh in Balochistan, Pakistan. Harappan civilization is sometimes called Mature Harappan to distinguish it from the earlier cultures.

Terracotta figures such as the present lot have been unearthed at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, suggesting a commonality of style and purpose throughout the Indus Valley during the mature Harappan period (ca. 2600-1900 BC). In one excavated example from Chanu-daro a hole was poked in the belly, indicating that it would have been attached to a stick for use as a puppet or a small standard of the kind carried in the processions depicted on some seals. In others, the hole was indeed placed on the back of the animal, thus suggesting an alternative function, perhaps as part of a larger ensemble.

Zebu cattle are thought to be derived from the Indian bos primigenius namadicus, a subspecies of the aurochs. Wild Asian aurochs disappeared during the time of the Indus Valley Civilization from their range in the Indus River basin and other parts of the South Asian region possibly due to interbreeding with domestic zebu and the resultant fragmentation of wild populations due to loss of habitat. Believed to have first been bred in northwestern South Asia, between 7000 and 6000 BC, they are understood to have been dispersed by 4000 BC and spread across much of South Asia by 2000 BC.

Literature comparison:
Compare a related painted terracotta figure of a unicorn, also dated ca. 2600-1900 BC, illustrated by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Cities of the Indus Valley, in Joan Aruz (ed.), Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, 2003, no. 276, p. 390. Compare a related serpentine figure of a bull, 14.7 cm long, also dated ca. 2600-1900 BC, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 1986.280. Compare two related terracotta models of a humped ox, 9 cm long, dated ca. 2500 BC, used to draw a toy chariot, in the Brooklyn Museum, accession numbers 37.96 and 37.97.