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The study of small metal statuary from the Levant is notorious for the many uncertainties it involves. This arises not from any lack of examples (for their number and variety is remarkable in view of the relative rarity of such objects elsewhere in the ancient Near East), but from the scarcity of precise archaeological evidence for local styles and their development. If the figures from Byblos (about 1700) are excluded from the count, the majority of published metal statuettes are without known provenance. When they are reported from excavations, their context, even if carefully observed and recorded, usually offers no more than a broad terminus ante quem for the date of manufacture. This has naturally given rise to strikingly different dates for important examples in reputable books and articles, arbitrarily reproduced without comment or qualification in derivative publications. There has also been a steady production of after-casts and copies in modern times, many inept or in strange alloys, but often sufficiently ingenious to add further confusion to so ill-documented a field of study (Seeden 1978). A tendency to illustrate the same few statuettes over and over again without precise information on their original archaeological context or date, or to introduce into general studies of Canaanite (or Phoenician) – culture and religion statuettes of uncertain authenticity from unspecified sources, has only added further confusions. Systematic study and classification is further confounded by the fact that many of these statuettes were very crudely made, some clearly because it was intended they should be overlaid with sheet gold or silver, but a great many more because they were made in local workshops lacking highly skilled modellers and metalsmiths.
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