Terracotta figurines with lyres from Priene, possibly depicting Baubo

Remember the episode of Family Guy in which Peter Griffin recalled his grandfather's sister, whose legs went all the way up to her ears? I have recently found the archaeological prototype of this character.

At first glance, these terracotta statuettes look like figures of Apollo: the lyre of Apollo in the hands, and the coiffure is purely Apollonian. But where, in that case, has he mislaid his body? It is quite possible that these are representations of the goddess of unbridled merriment Baubo, for whom the principal parts of the body are, by and large, the head and the nether regions, and both are, on the whole, rather well worked out in these figurines.

Unfortunately, the source offers no convincing grounds for saying who this actually is. The terracottas were found in the west of Turkey, during the excavation of the ancient polis of Priene in the late nineteenth century. All in all, one more reminder of just how interesting and strange the culture of Ancient Greece really was, and how much about it we still do not know.