Terracotta fertility figurines of prehistoric Eurasian design from modern East Africa

This paper investigates two types of terracotta figurine, both from East African cultures, which are unusual in their resemblance to ceramic statuettes from pre-Indo-European south-eastern Europe (Old Europe) and the Ancient Near East (6th-1st millennium BCE). The first type consists of a "phallic female" style of fertility doll from the Samburu or Turkana peoples of northern Kenya, in which an obviously phallic body-shape is given unmistakably female attributes such as breasts ("Gudza doll;" Section 1). The result resembles the well-known Amlash idols from Iran of the early 1st millennium BCE. The second type consists of figurines that look like Neolithic to Iron Age fertility statuettes of Eurasian provenance and includes an Astarte-like bird-headed goddess nursing an infant (Section 2). These were made by Beta Israel (Falasha) women from the Gondar region of Ethiopia. In recent years, most of this Jewish community has relocated to Israel. Many surprises are encountered in unravelling the origins, creation, use and appreciation of these two groups of curious and challenging artifacts. Ranging from Australopithecus to Zimbabwe, from Baba Yaga to Beta Israel and from Yemen to semen, the over-arching narrative could equally well have been titled "The Sex-Lives of Statuettes."