AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT
ANOTHER PROPERTY
AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT

MIDDLE KINGDOM, 12TH-13TH DYNASTY, 1985-1650 B.C.

Details
AN EGYPTIAN PAINTED WOOD MUMMY PORTRAIT
MIDDLE KINGDOM, 12TH-13TH DYNASTY, 1985-1650 B.C.
25 1⁄2 in. (64.7 cm.) long
Provenance
Archéologie Méditerranéenne, J.A. Labat and M.C. Slitine, Drouot Rive Gauche, Paris, 2 March 1979, lot 37bis.
Private Collection, France, acquired from the above.
Arts d'Orient, d'Inde & Archéologie, Millon et Associés, Paris, 15 December 2020, lot 233.

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Hannah Fox Solomon
Hannah Fox Solomon Head of Department, Specialist

Lot Essay

The deceased is depicted with idealized features including a straight nose, small full lips pressed together and a rounded chin. The eyes are inlaid with obsidian and limestone, framed in bronze. The underside of the chin has a square mortise for a separately-made now-missing beard. He wears a voluminous green wig framed in white and yellow and a multi-colored striped broad collar, visible between the lappets.  This mummy portrait originates from the upper portion of an anthropoid coffin, which has parallels from the sites in Meir and Dahshur.  An especially important parallel also with a black-painted face is the well-known coffin of Nakht-Ankh from Rifeh, one of a pair from the “Tomb of Two Brothers.” See W.M. Petrie, "Gizeh and Rifeh," in British School of Archaeology in Egypt, pp. 12-13, pl. XB.

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