The so-called Bicha of Balazote is an Iberian sculpture

Iberian sculpture

Iberian sculpture, a subset of Iberian art, describes the various sculptural styles developed by the Iberians from the Bronze age up to the Roman conquest...

 that was found in the borough of Balazote

Balazote

Balazote is a municipality in Albacete, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. It has a population of 2,412.-External links:*...

 in Albacete province

Albacete (province)

Albacete is a province of central Spain, in the southern part of the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. It is bordered by the provinces of Granada, Murcia, Alicante, Valencia, Cuenca, Ciudad Real and Jaén....

 (Castile-La Mancha

Castile-La Mancha

Castile-La Mancha is an autonomous community of Spain. Castile-La Mancha is bordered by Castile and León, Madrid, Aragon, Valencia, Murcia, Andalusia, and Extremadura. It is one of the most sparsely populated of Spain's autonomous communities...

), Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. It was first studied by a group of French archaeologists who identified it as a kind of deer, hence the name 'biche' (doe, female deer in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

), which was then Castillianized

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 to 'bicha', i.e., snake or bug. The sculpture has been dated to the 6th century BC, and has been in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain

National Archaeological Museum of Spain

The National Archaeological Museum of Spain is a museum in Madrid, Spain, located beside the Plaza de Colón , sharing its building with the National Library....

 in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, since 1910.
The Bicha was found at the site of Majuelos not far from the city center. Recent excavations in the Balazote plain revealed a tomb and burial mound in which this unique piece may have belonged. Nearby, important mosaics from a Roman villa

Roman villa

A Roman villa is a villa that was built or lived in during the Roman republic and the Roman Empire. A villa was originally a Roman country house built for the upper class...

 were also discovered.

Carved of two limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 blocks in the second half of the 6th century BC, the statue is 93 cm long and 73 cm high. It is a chimeric synthesis of man and animal, in this case a man-headed bull. The bull body is in repose and shows good knowledge of the traits of that animal, with the forelegs bent under the chest and hind legs tucked under the belly. Some details protrude; a hoof and a hipbone. The tail is curved on the left thigh and ends in a tuft of hair. The head is that of a horned, bearded man with bull's ears. Details of the sculpture are similar to archaic Greek hieratic sculpture

Ancient Greek sculpture

Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages. They were used to depict the battles, mythology, and rulers of the land known as Ancient Greece.-Geometric:...

 in that the hair and beard are rendered by straight grooves.

The piece is not carved in entirety: one corner appears to be ashlar

Ashlar

Ashlar is prepared stone work of any type of stone. Masonry using such stones laid in parallel courses is known as ashlar masonry, whereas masonry using irregularly shaped stones is known as rubble masonry. Ashlar blocks are rectangular cuboid blocks that are masonry sculpted to have square edges...

 and designed to adhere to some place, like the lions of Pozo Moro. It may have belonged to a tomb or temple. There is some possibility that it represents a god of fertility, as did the man-headed bull statues used by the Greeks to represent river gods which made the fields fertile. According to A. García and Bellido, the Bicha represents the Greek river god Achelous

Achelous

In Greek mythology, Achelous was the patron deity of the "silver-swirling" Achelous River, which is the largest river of Greece, and thus the chief of all river deities, every river having its own river spirit. His name is pre-Greek, its meaning unknown...

 whose image on a Sicilian coin it resembles. "This sculpture is a daughter of the Greeks, and if you will, granddaughter of the Phoenicians and great-granddaughter of Mesopotamia," A. García and Bellido observed in 1931.