The Face of God (or the face of a UFO entity)?

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 The Fall 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review:

The article matching the cover – The Face of Yahweh by Yosef Garfinkel (the Yigael Yadin Chair in Archaeology of Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) – reveals the piece shown, and provides an interpretation of what it depicts [Page 31]:

The recovered clay “head” is noted “from 10^th Century B.C. (above) and accompanies other heads and figurines dating from the late tenth or early ninth century B.C.
 
Garfinkel discusses the controversial Biblical ban “You shall not make for yourself and idol [Exodus 20:4]: “Was there an actual ban on cult images during the Iron Age (c. 1200-586 B.C.)?” Some scholars accept the ban and others do not, he writes.
 
For our purposes, we need to know if the creator of the “head” represented a true image or was providing an attempt at realistic representation of what he or she saw as God (or Yahweh).
 
Michel Lorblanchet and Paul Bahn in The First Artists: In search of the worlds’ oldest art [Thames & Hudson, London 2017] offer the time scales and purposes of early art, allowing for a progression of abstract or representational art from early man into the Upper Paleolithic era, circa 40,000 B.C.
 
And Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The theories of Julian Jaynes edited by Marcel Kuijsten [Julian Jaynes Society, NV, 2016] gives insight to the evolution of mankind's early thinking, giving us the substantiation of an ability to produce art that is based in reality, in what was seen. 

The period when the Yahweh (God) head was produced -- 10th century B.C. -- allows for a representation that is not imaginary or abstract, and I think the "artist" depicted what he or she (and others) saw: a being professing to be God (Or Yahweh).

Yahweh, as delineated in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) forbids humans to look upon him. Why?

Was God (Yahweh) deformed, a deity on Earth (from where on Earth?) who disdained being seen?

Ancient Astronaut theorists say the "rulers" or "gods from the sky" -- in all cultures from antiquity -- in the many forms depicted -- represent extraterrestrials who visited the Earth, and drawn or sculpted, by early humans as those ETs were.

The problem is that it's unlikely that extraterrestrials ever visited the Earth, certainly not in the numbers recorded or indicated by the many versions presented by the AA believers.

But the various "creatures" and "gods" described by ancient texts are, indeed, what humans thought were gods or divine beings.

(Carl Sagan and I.S. Shklovskii suggest in Intelligent Life in the Universe [1962] that extraterrestrials visited Sumeria about 10,000 years ago.)

And Yahweh, as sculpted in clay, shown above, was what early Mesopotamian peoples worshipped or saw.

What I'm driving at, again, is that the gods of old were "gods" or thought to be, and those "gods" were seen as depicted.

The "face of God (Yahweh)" shown in the BAR article referenced above is an actual representation of God, as seen/experienced by peoples of the Middle East during the Iron Age period, 10th century B.C.

Those deities were extant, on the Earth -- how or why to be explained upcoming -- and interacted with humans.

(How people who witnessed "attractive beings" -- as probed here a few days ago -- in flying saucers has to be accounted for, and the "beautiful" entities experienced in myths and religious texts also. Were the minions of the awesome and frightening gods -- like Yahweh -- of a different breed?)

RR