Reviving Kubaba: Using Digital Methods to Unite the Body of a Hittite Goddess in the British Museum with Her Newly-Discovered Head

James Fraser
Curator for the Levant, The British Museum

Tuesday, November 15
12:00 pm
LaSalle Banks room of the Oriental Institute

The monumental Kubaba stele has been one of the British Museum's most celebrated pieces of Hittite statuary since its acquisition in 1881. Athough broken at the top, the stele features the goddess Kubaba on one side, and a rare Luwian inscription on the other. In a major discovery last year, the Turkish-Italian Carchemis Expedition recovered the top of the stele in four large pieces, including the head of the goddess and the opening lines of the text. These fragments completment an additional fragment acquired by the Vatican Museums in 1961. This presentation discusses an on-going project to create a digital 3D model reuniting the body of the goddess with her newly discovered head.