Tel Dor: Persian period figurines

These three figurines of pregnant women wearing Egyptian wigs and holding one hand on their stomachs are typical of figurines found at other Phoenician sites in Lebanon, Cyprus, and Israel in the Persian period. Scholars usually assume that they were votive offerings to a goddess. Some similar figurines from a 4th century BCE shipwreck at Shave Zion, on the northern coast of Israel, bore the symbol of the Phoenician goddess Tanit.