A 9,000-Year-Old Mask from the Neolithic era

A 9,000-year-old mask is set to be auctioned off at Christie’s June 8. The 9,000-year-old limestone mask will be the oldest art piece to ever grace the famed auction house, reports Yahoo.
It’s estimated that the 9,000-year-old mask could fetch upwards of $600,000. The mask is Neolithic and is meant to represent a human skull and resembles a modern-day hockey mask.
The 9,000-year-old limestone mask found in the Judean dessert, estimated to be from around the 7th millenium B.C., is about 9 inches long and resembles a human skull, according to the listing on the website of auction house Christie’s.
Molly Morse Limmer, head of Christie’s Antiquities department in New York, believes that the mask was one of the first attempts to connect with the spiritual world.
This sort of mask is particularly rare. Although others were thought to have existed at some point in time, very few remain intact. Molly Morse Limmer, head of Christie’s Antiquities department in New York, says that the Judean desert’s dry climate is what helped preserve the item for so many years. However, nobody seems to know what purpose the mask served upon its creation.
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