When wandering around South Arabianarchaeological sites, one occasionally notes what appear to be fossilfootprints, usually about the size of normal human feet, although atthe ruins of the ancient Hadhrami capital at Shabwa the imprint of asingle foot is more than a metre long. Needless to say, the Jurassicor Cretaceous limestone of Yemen occasionally shows marine fossilsformed one or two hundred million years before the appearance of manin Yemen (or anywhere else), and therefore the footprints cannot befossil. If you have the good fortune to wander around the storeroomsof Yemeni museums, you will have the chance to see smaller fossilfootprints, in smaller blocks of stone with lengthy inscriptions onone face, betraying the character of the footprints: they were cutinto the rock in order to support the feet of a metal statue. Theinscriptions relate that such statues were placed in front of templefacades, many of them donated by private people (including women) tothe god (or goddess) of that particular temple, but also by kings. It is no surprise that only the footprint remains, as theinscriptions record that many of them were made of gold.
The statues that have been well preserved -such as those of Dhamir Alay and his son in the entry to the SanaaNational Museum - and those fragments that have been found arehowever made of bronze, and not gold. While it is possible that somestatues were made of gold, one should not forget that ancient bronzeswere not as green as we see them in museums today, but golden, atleast before the acquired their patina, and the ancients were notneedlessly modest when no one was contesting their claims.
Some ancient Yemeni bronze statues bearinscriptions identifying the person depicted, and thus it is clearthat these are not the cult statues in the innermost sanctuary of thetemple. In the ancient world people frequently had statues ofthemselves made (not quite the way we have photographs made, buttheoretically similar to the way we line up to be photographed infront of some monument or special place), and many of the largerstatues that have survived depict people and kings, as seems to havebeen the case in cities of the Roman Empire in the North, such asJerash and Palmyra. In those cities stone and bronze statues ofindividuals adorned the main market places, where they could beadmired by everyone, but the Yemeni bronze statues of individualswere set up in front of temples, in private gardens, and asornamentation on private houses, so that one can hardly imagine theimpact of the sun glinting off all those statues in a crowded citysuch as ancient Timna (the capital city of Qataban) or ancientShabwa.
The full sized cult statues may well havebeen made of gold and thus disappeared long ago, but many smallervotive statues depicting the gods to whom they were offered were madeof bronze, and some of these have been preserved until the presentday. The texts associated with the larger statues probably reflectthe nature of these smaller offerings, and thus in interpreting theirsignificance, we draw on these texts. Frequently, the donor willhave appealed to the god for an oracle decision, and promised the godthat if he were to be the party favoured by the decision, then hewould offer a statue to the god. Other donors vowed to offer astatue to the god should they be rescued from some difficultposition, due either to illness or other problems, and obviously didso when they found themselves safe and sound. In the same vein, theoccasional king will have offered a statue to a god as thanks for hisaid in winning a battle or a war. There is also at least onepossible instance of a woman being assigned the duty of providing anoffering to assure that rain would fall plentifully. This wouldimply that a person stood in need of support, due to an unfavorablefinancial position or an illness, or a more immediate threat such asa mortal enemy, and that a vow was rashly made to a god, and then,once rescued, the happy person would commission a statue. The moredire the need, the larger and more costly the statue. Most of thestatues of the ancient world were made using variants of a one-offbasis called the "lost-wax" process, whereby a clay figure of theobject to be depicted was made, and then a mold fashioned around it,and then the mold broken, so that the original form could bereproduced in wax. This wax as then melted out and molten metalpoured in.
Small solid figures could be made quiteeasily this way, and it is possible that craftsmen had a selection ofstatuettes to offer right in front of the temple, so that minor vowscould be taken care of quite quickly. Larger figures had to beassembled using dozens of different pieces, and the final result wasa hollow statue. Smaller statues frequently reveal small irregularformations under or between the feet. These are the remains of theholes through which the bronze was poured into the mold, but theywere not filed away afterwards, because they could be used to holdthe statue erect in some kind of stone or clay pedestal.
Large or small, the votive statues wouldfind their way to the temple, and the temples of antiquity frequentlybecame cluttered with the offerings over the centuries, and we knowthat Yemeni temples at Sawda, Baraqish and Ma'rib were in use foralmost a thousand years, or even longer. If the temple was notplundered in the course of one war or another, the priests may haveoccasionally gathered up the statues and put them in a specialdeposit. Either way, with the advent of Islam, the temples fell intodisuse, and the statues were not treasured, but melted down,immediately if they were made of gold, and later if of bronze. Thosestatues and statuettes found today will have been buried whenbuildings collapsed on them or simply forgotten in the corners oftemples or private house shrines.
Today, archaeologists and peasants comeacross them in the course of their normal work, and they are broughtto museums.