The Israel Museum brings together for the first time a rare group of 9,000-year-old stone masks, the oldest known to date, in a groundbreaking exhibition that opened today through September 13, 2014. Culminating nearly a decade of research, Face to Face: The Oldest Masks in the World showcases twelve extraordinary Neolithic masks, all originating in the same region in the ancient Land of Israel. The exhibition marks the first time that this group will be displayed together, in their birthplace, and the first time that the majority of them will be on public view.

Israel Museum Director James Snyder said the masks “represent the first attempts of man to fashion with his hands, out of physical material, something that was a reflection of himself or in relation to something outside himself.”

Originating from the Judean Hills and nearby Judean Desert, the twelve masks on view each share striking stylistic features. Large eye holes and gaping mouths create the expression of a human skull. Perforations on the periphery may have been used for wearing them, for the attachment of hair, which would have given the masks a more human appearance, or for suspending the masks from pillars or other constructed forms.

Based on similarities with other cultic skulls of ancestors found in villages of the same period, the masks are believed to have represented the spirits of dead ancestors, used in religious and social ceremonies and in rites of healing and magic. By recreating human images for cultic purposes, the early agricultural societies of Neolithic times may have been expressing their increasing mastery of the natural world and reflecting their growing understanding of the nature of existence.

As an archeologist and anthropologist, Dr. Debby Hershman surmises that the two- to four-pound masks may have been used in ancestor worship, healing and magic cultic rituals in one of the world’s oldest known farming villages. Each mask shares certain characteristics but it is clear that the differing shape, size and features of each face are meant to depict a particular person. “Did they wear them or hang them on the wall? With our modern technological methods, we determined that they were made to be worn - and were worn, most probably by shamans,” she says.


  Dr. Debby Hershman displaying one of the ancient masks
  Copyright: Israel Museum, Jerusalem


The mystery of the masks

The current presentation is the result of more than a decade of research. For many years, the Israel Museum has held in its collections two Neolithic stone masks. One was acquired in the 1970s, originally found by a farmer in Horvat Duma in the Judean Hills. It is inscribed inside with the name of Moshe Dayan, the famous Israeli general, who had the mask in his own collection before it was donated to the museum. The other mask was discovered by an archeological team, including Hershman and Tel Aviv University Prof. Yuval Goren, in the 1980s in a cave at Nahal Hemar in the Judean Desert.

“Ten years ago, I was preparing the two masks for exhibition and found in our archives three old black-and-white photos of similar masks that were labeled as being from a private collection,” Hershman says. “Nobody knew anything about it.” Eventually, she showed the photos to Snyder, and he recognized the masks from the collection of Michael and Judy Steinhardt in New York.

The Steinhardts agreed to lend their masks to the museum, so that Hershman and Goren, who is an expert in comparative microarchaeology, could study them. Goren used the computerized archaeology laboratory at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to conduct 3D analysis of the objects. The current display reflects the fruits of this in-depth research, bringing together twelve striking and enigmatic masks near the place of their origin and for the first time. The exhibition will be on display from March 11, 2014 until September 11, 2014.

“Debby and Yuval have determined that these masks are all from the same region in the Judean Hills and nearby in the desert, all from the same period and presumably all served a similar function,” Snyder says. “It’s a great opportunity to start to unlock the mystery of why these were made and for what purpose.”


First glimmerings of organized religion

Hershman says she is grateful that the masks are made from stone, “because probably other groups made similar masks from other materials that did not last.” The fact that the stone was coated with a paint-like patina made it relatively easy to pinpoint their period of origin.

The masks are “young” in relation to the museum’s oldest object, thought to be the oldest art work in the world – a tiny 233,000-year-old female figurine found in what is now the Golan Heights. Made of volcanic material, it may have been fashioned by a pre-modern human species.
 
Nevertheless, says Snyder, the rare collection of prehistoric masks gives another clue to the beginnings of organized religion in this part of the world.

“In our [museum’s] narrative, that’s all about entering that very long highway that starts with the first glimmerings of existential reflection and a long time later leads to polytheism, monotheism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Along that highway there was always, for us, that special moment because of these two amazing masks found within a 20-mile radius of each other in the Judean Hills, clearly related to a ritual that we don’t know very much about.”