9,000-Year-Old Mask Heads To Auction

A 9,000-year-old mask will soon be on the auction block. Christie’s, who said that the limestone mask is the oldest art object that they have ever auctioned off, could fetch more than $600,000.

Reuters reports that the Neolithic limestone mask was found in the Judean desert. It resembles a hockey mask and has small holes drilled along the edges. The mask may have been used to place over the faces of the deceased or was possibly placed on a wall or pillar.

Christie’s describes the mask, saying:

“Fashioned to resemble a human skull, oval in form with thick walls, the reverse concave, the cut-out eyes with narrow ridges extending up from their outer corners over the temples, raised cheekbones below with a ridge extending back, the slender triangular nose with two grooves for the nostrils, the lipless oval mouth open, revealing teeth, with five biconical drill holes along the perimeter.”

Molly Morse Limmer, head of Christie’s Antiquities department in New York, believes that the mask was one of the first attempts to connect with the spiritual world. Limmer said:

“Only very few of these masks are known. All were found in the Judean desert, all were carved of limestone, and all represent the human skull. No doubt they represent one of the earliest human attempts to connect with the spiritual world. Given the skeletal representation, it would be logical that they relate to death rituals or ancestor worship.”

The 9,000-year-old mask will be auctioned off at Christie’s antiquities sale in New York on June 8.