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Eye Inlay for an Ancient Statue

Today's artifact is a broken inlay that was probably part of a wooden cult statue that stood on the dais of the previously unknown shrine we've just revealed at Nimrud/Kalhu. When the Babylonians and Medes destroyed the city around 612 BCE, they took almost everything of value, smashed the rest, and burned the buildings. In the process, they destroyed the statue in this shrine, but pieces of it remain, like blue beard fragments and this piece that is about half of a large eye inlay. It's quite round, but would have sat in an oval or eye-shaped hole in the statue's head, probably fastened with bitumen, though it shows evidence of an added securing mechanism. A wire was run through it and held it to a post or ridge inside the socket. The socket shape would prevent the final statue from looking like it had completely round eyes, though even still the pupil is rather large and might look odd to us today. We don't know what deity was represented in this shrine yet. I'll be making more videos about the find location soon.