INCREDIBLE INDIA: INDO-GREEK RELATION
POMPEII YAKSHI (LAKSHMI) The Pompeii Lakshmi is an ivory statuette that was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, a Roman city destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 79 CE. It was found in 1938 by an Italian scholar Amedeo Maiuri. The statuette has been dated to the first-century CE. Originally, it was thought that the statuette represented the goddess Lakshmi, a goddess of fertility, beauty and wealth, revered by early Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. However, the iconography, in particular the exposed genitals, reveals that the figure is more likely to depict a yakshi, a female tree spirit that represents fertility, or possibly a syncretic version of Venus-Sri-Lakshmi from an ancient exchange between Classical Greco-Roman and Indian cultures. The yakshi is evidence of commercial trade between India and Rome in the first century CE. Its: Height: 24.5 cm ,Material : Ivory, Discovered : 1930–1938. Based on archeological finds and historian work, Its origin is not entirely cert...