The Strangford Apollo is an

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

sculpture of a nude boy, with the arms and lower legs missing. It dates to around 490 BC, making it one of the latest examples of the

kouros kouros ( grc, κοῦρος, , plural kouroi) is the modern term given to free-standing Ancient Greek sculptures that depict nude male youths. They first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and are prominent in Attica and Boeotia, with a less ...

type of statue, and is made of

Parian marble Parian marble is a fine-grained semi translucent pure-white and entirely flawless marble quarried during the classical era on the Greek island of Paros in the Aegean Sea. It was highly prized by ancient Greeks for making sculptures. Some of the ...

. The sculpture has been in

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

's collection since 1864, when the museum acquired it from the collection of

Percy Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford Percy Ellen Algernon Frederick William Sydney Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford (26 November 18259 January 1869) was a British nobleman and man of letters. Early life He was born in St Petersburg, Russia, the son of the 6th Viscount Strangford, ...

Function

The Strangford Apollo may have been a

cult statue In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome ...

because it was found on the island

Anafi Anafi or Anaphe ( el, Ανάφη; grc, Ἀνάφη) is a Greek island community in the Cyclades. In 2011, it had a population of 271. Its land area is . It lies east of the island of Thíra (Santorini). Anafi is part of the Thira regional unit. ...

, which harbors the remains of the temple of

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...

References

Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures in the British Museum 5th-century BC Greek sculptures Marble sculptures in the United Kingdom Archaeological discoveries in Greece Sculptures of Apollo Cult images {{UK-sculpture-stub