Head of a Buddha Sculpture from the Longmen Caves

This head once belonged to a sculpture of a buddha made for one of the more than 2,000 caves that make up the cave-temple complex of Longmen, near the city of Luoyang in Henan province. The first cave-temples at Longmen were created during the Northern Wei dynasty (493–534), but more than half the caves were developed during the Tang dynasty, a time when Buddhism flourished in China.