Pompeii Lakshmi - Wikipedia
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 by Amedeo Maiuri, an Italian scholar, in 1938.[1] The statuette has been dated to the first-century CE.[2] The statuette is thought of as representing an Indian goddess of feminine beauty and fertility. It is possible that the sculpture originally formed the handle of a mirror.[2] The yakshi is evidence of commercial trade between India and Rome in 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.[3][4] 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.[1]
The statuette was discovered in October 1938 beside the Casa dei Quattro stili at Pompeii.[2] Based on its architectural remains and floor plan, this "House of the Four Styles," directly off of the Via dell'Abbondanza, is now believed to have belonged to a successful merchant.[6] It is crammed with luxurious Indian commodities, suggesting that Romans in the first century CE had a fascination with antiquities not just from Greece but also from remote cultures, and that Romans had a desire to acquire objects they considered exotic.[6]
