ANATOMICAL VOTIVES


Flat ovoid shape with raised coils. The image is horizontally symmetric, with the coils arranged around an egg-like knob. A chip is missing on the edge.
An almond shape that resembles a blank eye on a face, rather than an eyeball.
Two tan-colored hands, left and right, stretched flat as if waving with closed fingers. There are no fingernails, but the palms have incised lines.
Vertical plaque with high relief of a right leg from the mid-thigh to foot, as though standing. The muscles are smooth but defined. The two smallest toes have broken off. To the right is a retrograde inscription in Greek.
A curving brown object shaped like two rows of teeth between a pair of lips.

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Votive offerings were frequently left at Asclepieia (temples to Asclepius, the healing god), either in hope of a cure or in gratitude for successful treatment. Thousands of objects representing body parts have been recovered across the ancient Mediterranean: legs, feet, arms, hands, ears, eyes, heads, teeth, breasts, wombs, vulvae, phalluses, torsos, bladders, other viscera, and more. Some temples may have specialized as centers for certain afflictions. At the Asclepieion in Athens, for example, 40 percent of the votives depict eyes, leading some scholars to believe that visitors often sought relief from ophthalmic diseases there. Corinth has yielded many votive feet and hands, perhaps due to injuries sustained by local farmers. Yet an absence of written sources describing the function of ancient votives has led some historians to caution against purely literal interpretations; votives of eyes may have represented more than just eye pain or poor sight, while feet might have been connected with travel.