The
Ancient Greek word kouros meant a male youth, and is used by
Homer to refer to young soldiers. From the fifth century the word connoted specifically an adolescent, beardless male, but not a child. Compare
ephebos.A kouros (plural kouroi) is a statue of a male youth, especially those dating from the
Archaic Period of
Greek sculpture (about 650 BC to about 500 BC). The earliest kouroi were made of wood (see
xoanon) and have not survived, but by the seventh century the Greeks had learned from the Egyptians the art of carving stone with iron tools, and were making kouroi from stone, particularly
marble from the islands of
Paros and
Samos. Modern art historians have used the word to refer to this specific type of male nude statue since the 1890s. Kouroi were also commonly known as "Apollos," since it was assumed that all kouroi depicted the ideally youthful
Apollo.
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