The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 21, 2025

Metal sculpture of a man kneeling and wrapping his arms around a nail almost his size. The sculpture has discolored bright green metal with hints of red-brown. The man has a beard detailed with vertical lines and wears a cone-shaped headdress with tendrils wrapping around it. His hands wrap around the top of the nail, his fingertips meeting on the other side. The nail is wide at the top before steadily narrowing to a point.

"Foundation Nail" of Gudea

c. 2100 BCE

Mesopotamia, Neo-Sumerian, Iraq, probably Lagash

copper alloy, lost-wax cast
Overall: 17.5 x 4.5 x 7.3 cm (6 7/8 x 1 3/4 x 2 7/8 in.); with base: 20.9 x 6.3 x 9.1 cm (8 1/4 x 2 1/2 x 3 9/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 1990.31
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The ruler Gudea placed one of these special nails in every temple he built in order to commemorate it.
  • The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991. Reproduced: p. 3 archive.org
    Kozloff, Ariellé P. "Notable Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 3 (1991): 63-147. Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 66 www.jstor.org
    Quenet, Philippe. Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2016. Reproduced: p. 188, fig. 6A
  • Notable Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 15, 1991).
  • {{cite web|title="Foundation Nail" of Gudea|url=false|author=|year=c. 2100 BCE|access-date=21 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1990.31