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or the head.20 This encrustation extends over the surface of the large break on the right corner, but not over the break at the shoulder. The latter break seems to have been caused at the time when the head was broken from the shaft. This break seems to have been deliberate and not the result of an accidental fall, for there are no signs of impact on head or shaft that would have resulted from such a fall. On the other hand, chips of marble missing from corresponding areas above and below the break on the back and right side (figs. 3, 4) might suggest that some wedgeshaped instrument, like a large chisel or drove or pickax, was driven into the marble at these points, but the broken surfaces of those areas do not show the effects of the acid bath (fig. 9). They must have been chipped away after the head was treated with acid and therefore after the head had been broken from the shaft. The acid bath has had an unfortunate effect on the surface of the head; details have been softened, and the hair has a watery appearance. The result is not only to muffle the facial details but also to make the head appear glazed and different from the body.21 PERTINENCE OF THE HEAD We thus come to the question of the pertinence of the head to the shaft. The acid treatment of the head has ruined the edges of the marble around the neck, and it is impossible to prove a join between those outer edges (figs. 9, 10).22 The holes of the iron pin that was inserted at some time, The Berkeley Plato / 9 20. The breaks on the front and the lack of encrustation on the back, as well as the iron stains on the front only (see Twilley, below, appendix B), suggest that there was a time when the herm was lying on its back, perhaps just under the surface of the earth and being hit by agricultural tools such as picks and plows. 21. John Twilley’s investigation has shown that hydrofluoric acid was used, which suggests that the acid bath did not happen before the late nineteenth century at the earliest. See further appendix B below, p. 72. 22. The destruction of the marble on the neck of the head by the acid is visible where the surface is glazed, as beneath the 8-4 of the inventory number at the upper left of fig. 9 here. probably before the herm arrived at Berkeley, have obliterated the surfaces at the center.23 The removal of two layers of adhesive from the remainder of the surfaces has further blurred the edges of the marble crystals on the broken surfaces. Nonetheless, general correspondences survive,24 and there is one position at which the head sits comfortably on the shaft. It feels right, but not as precisely so as if the break were fresh and the two pieces rejoined in their uniquely and reciprocally broken surfaces .25 In this position, the head is slightly tilted to the shaft, a relationship that can be paralleled on other portrait herms.26 Another reason for assigning this head to this shaft, beyond the fact that they were purchased together, is the existence (mentioned above) of encrustations on the front of each, and the lack of encrustation on the back of each. This is hardly conclusive, but it supports the association. A third and more compelling reason to associate head and shaft is the ribbons. These match perfectly in size and alignment, even though the 10 / The Berkeley Plato 23. The relatively square cutting of the socket for the pin located in the head fragment would suggest that the hole was cut with a chisel and not made by means of a drill. The shape of the socket in the shaft is obscured by the pin, and efforts to remove it were defeated by an extremely hard filler that had been poured around the pin. This was beneath a softer adhesive, which is surely that used when the head was rejoined to the shaft and after the former’s acid bath had taken place. It would therefore appear that there was a period when head and shaft had been pinned together but were then separated before the bath. It has not been possible to test the lower, earlier, harder adhesive in the pin hole. 24. Note, for example, the low projecting ridge of...

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