Venus of Thiaroye in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

Title: Female Body (Venus of Thiaroye)

Date: Before 2000 B.C. (?)

Geography: Senegal

Medium: Sandstone

Dimensions: W. 3/4 × D. 1 × L. 2 3/4 in. (1.9 × 2.5 × 7 cm)

Classification: Stone-Sculpture

Credit Line: Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal (SEN 67-21)


The earliest societies to prosper in the Sahel were pastoralist communities. Their mobile elites accrued wealth and power in the form of cattle and semiprecious stones and memorialized themselves through the construction of tumuli—mounds for burials or the deposition of possessions. This delicately incised pebble, discovered casually in the vicinity of a dune, appears to have been imbued with symbolic meaning. Only minimal carving of the stone’s natural form was required to transform it into a tribute to procreation.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/774681