Lady of Elche

The bust, originally colored, represents a woman wearing an elaborate headdress and large wheel-like coils (known as ) on each side of the face. The opening in the rear of the sculpture indicates it may have been used as a funerary urn. Other artifacts associated with Iberian culture are the Lady of Guardamar—which has similar wheel-like and necklaces—and the Lady of Baza. While the Lady of Elche is a bust, there are indications that it was part of a seated statue, similar to the Lady of Baza (with which it shares similar necklace pendants) or a standing one like the Gran Dama Oferente from Cerro de los Santos (Montealegre del Castillo, Albacete). These three figures and the Bicha of Balazote are exhibited in the same Iberian art hall in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid. In 2023, two female stone busts were discovered at the Turuñuelo archeological site in Guareña, Spain, that are somewhat similar to the Lady of Elche, but are about a century earlier, dating to the 5th century BC. They were found in the context of the Tartessos culture. The busts feature details of jewelry and hairstyles, and are thought to be the first facial representations of Tartessian goddesses. ==Discovery and repatriation==

The sculpture was found on 4 August 1897, by a young worker, Manuel Campello Esclapez. The popular version of the story differs from the official report by Pere Ibarra (the local keeper of the records) which stated that Antonio Maciá found the bust. Ibarra's version of the discovery story, was that farm workers clearing the southeast slope of La Alcudia for agricultural purposes, discovered the sculpture. The bust was quickly nicknamed "Reina Mora" or "Moorish Queen" by locals. Since 1941, the Lady of Elche has been officially owned by the Museo del Prado (catalog number E433). The discovery of the Lady of Elche initiated a popular interest in pre-Roman Iberian culture. She appeared on a 1948 Spanish one-peseta banknote and was mentioned in William Gaddis's The Recognitions (1955). In 1971, it was transferred from the Prado to the National Archaeological Museum of Spain, where it is currently exhibited. Exhibitions in Elche In 1965, the Lady of Elche returned briefly to Elche, on the occasion of the seventh centenary of Mystery Play of Elche. On 19 January 2006, the Minister of Culture of Spain, Carmen Calvo, issued a decision to temporarily lease the Lady to its hometown. From 18 May 2006 to 1 November 2006, the Lady of Elche presided over the inauguration of the Museum of Archaeology and History of Elche (in the Palace of Altamira) and the exhibition From Ilici to Elx, 2500 Years of History that took place in different locations in the city. It was represented by an exact replica afterwards. ==Contentions of forgery==

The bust was first accused of being a forgery in 1906, in an essay called "" by archeologist José Ramón Mélida. , another Iberian "lady" bust. . Archeological Museum. In 1995, art historian John F. Moffitt (1940–2008) published Art Forgery: The Case of the Lady of Elche (University Press of Florida) in which he contended that the statue was a forgery, citing its stylistic differences from ancient Iberian prototypes. Moffitt suggested that the sculpture could be the work of well-known forger Francisco Pallas y Puig (1859–1926), commissioned by the landowner, Manuel Campello Antón (1833–1904) to coincide with a visit from French archaeologist Pierre Paris, who purchased the sculpture for the Louvre. Moffitt discussed the sculpture in the context of a "golden age" of forgery in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which followed a growing cultural interest in collecting art and artifacts. Experts in Spanish archaeology have rejected Moffitt's theory and accept the Lady of Elche as a genuine ancient Iberian work. Antonio Uriarte of the University of Madrid has stated: "Decade by decade, research has reinforced the coherence of the Lady within the corpus of Iberian sculpture. The Lady was found more than a century ago, and many of its features, not then understood, have been confirmed by subsequent finds. For example, the use of paint in Iberian sculpture was unknown when the Lady appeared." A Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) study on the Lady of Elche micropigmentation published in 2005 concluded that the trace pigments on the statue were consistent with ancient materials and that no modern pigments had been found. Throughout the 20th century, other similar iberian busts were discovered in the southeast of Spain, such as the Lady of Baza, the Lady of Caudete, the Lady of Guardamar or the Lady of Cerro de los Santos. In 2011, María Pilar de Luxán, the author of the 2005 study, analyzed microparticles within the back hole of the Lady of Elche, utilizing electron microscopy and X-ray dispersive spectrometry. Luxán deduced that the particles belonged to the ashes of human bones and that they compared with those of the Iberian period. She concluded that the statue was used as a funerary urn in the Iberian period, thus guaranteeing its antiquity and confirming the hypothesis about its function. In 2017, Sonia Gutiérrez Lloret, chair of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Alicante and director of the University's Institute of Investigation in Archaeology and Historical Heritage-INAPH, wrote about the many discrepancies in the narrative surrounding the sculpture's origin as it evolved into an idealized national symbol. "A story has been built around the Lady that has avoided the obvious uncertainties, if not true contradictions," Gutiérrez Llore said, "but that by dint of being transmitted to future generations has ended up becoming the dominant historical memory, considered truthful, traditional and unquestionable." ==In modern culture==

The Lady of Elche stands as a statue representing Phoenicia as one of the seafaring nations at the Alexander Hamilton Custom House facade. French artist James Tissot based figures in several of his turn-of-the-century paintings on the Lady of Elche. A large prominent sculpture "La Dama Ibérica" based on the Lady of Elche and created by the Spanish sculptor Manolo Valdés in 2007 overlooks a major intersection in the downtown region of Valencia, Spain. ==See also==