Statue of an Offering Bearer
Met curator Catharine Roehrig on realism in Statue of an Offering Bearer dating from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, c. 1981–1975 B.C.E.
This masterpiece of Egyptian wood carving was discovered in a hidden chamber at the side of the passage leading into the rock cut tomb of the royal chief steward Meketre, who began his career under King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II of Dynasty 11 and continued to serve successive kings into the early years of Dynasty 12. Together with a second, very similar female figure (now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo) this statue flanked the group of twenty two models of gardens, workshops, boats, and a funeral procession that were crammed into the chamber's narrow space. Striding forward with her left leg, the woman carries on her head a basket filled with cuts of meat. In her right hand she holds a live duck by its wings. The figure's iconography is well known from reliefs of the Old Kingdom in which rows of offering bearers were depicted. Place names were often written beside these figures identifying them as personifications of estates that would provide sustenance for the spirit of the tomb owner in perpetuity. The woman is richly adorned with jewelry and wears a dress decorated with a pattern of feathers, the kind of garment often associated with goddesses. Thus, this figure and its companion in Cairo may also be associated with the funerary goddesses Isis and Nephthys who are often depicted at the foot and head of coffins, protecting the deceased.
All the accessible rooms in the tomb of Meketre had been plundered in ancient times, but, early in 1920, the Museum's excavator, Herbert Winlock had his workmen clean out the accumulated debris in order to obtain an accurate floor plan of the tomb. It was during this cleaning operation that the small hidden chamber was discovered, filled with its almost perfectly preserved models and the two statues. In the division of finds between the Egyptian Government and the Metropolitan Museum, half of the contents went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and half came to New York.
View this work on metmuseum.org.
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The speaker mentions that the Ancient Egyptians were "practical people" and thus in addition to providing "real food" they would provide this image of food. How would this work within their belief system however? I cannot see it both ways...either they believed that the afterlife would need this image of food in the form of a figure bearing gifts...or the real food would serve as sustenance for the soul in the afterlife...
Were they just trying to "cover all bases" as the saying goes? Or perhaps there is more to it than I am illustrating and in fact there was some sort of "journey" for the soul and these different forms or representations of "food" served different purposes at different stages in time for the deceased soul?(4 votes)
Maybe the artist realized that you could not have real food on a carving for the food would rot and could wreck the wood. The Ancient Egyptians might not have offered this image to the dead and they might have kept this around, or someone else to decorate and show their faith.(1 vote)
- 2:17- How do we know the artist is male?(2 votes)
2:17