The sculptor and painter Avraham Melnikov was born in Bessarabia. While studying medicine, he decided to become an artist. When his parents refused to support him, he moved to Chicago, where a brother lived. He fought with the Jewish Legion in Palestine during World War I and remained there after being demobilized. His monumental statute at Tel Hai, with its notable evocation of Mesopotamian art, is his most famous work. After its completion, he left for England, where he remained for the next twenty-five years, returning to Israel only a few months before he died. In England, he made a reputation for himself as a portrait painter.
Several horse figurines have objects on the forehead, like this one. The object may represent the horse’s forelock or mane, or perhaps a decorative ornament. This terra-cotta figurine from the City of…
Hybrid creature with wings on stone relief, Carchemish, 9th century BCE. The creature has the body and head of a lion, an additional human head, and wings, paralleling some of the elements in Ezekiel…
I am not I
when called to account—
plaster over, dumbly benched
the corrosive ardency
of blinkered identification.
To affirm nothing, a veil
of asymptotic bent,
prattling over-
tunes in the striated…