Lot 75
75
AN EGYPTIAN BRONZE OSIRIS
AN EGYPTIAN BRONZE OSIRIS
AN EGYPTIAN BRONZE OSIRIS
2 More
AN EGYPTIAN BRONZE OSIRIS

LATE PERIOD TO PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 664-30 B.C.

Details
AN EGYPTIAN BRONZE OSIRIS
LATE PERIOD TO PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 664-30 B.C.
8 ½ in. (21.5 cm.) high
Provenance
Lieutenant Commander Henry Honeychurch Gorringe (1841-1885), New York, acquired in Egypt, 1879-1890; thence by continuous descent.
Antiquities, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 13-14 December 1949, lot 172.
Dr. Manuel Gottlieb (1909-1972) and Doris Brickner (1921-2021), New York, acquired from the above; thence by descent.
The English Interior, Stair Galleries, Hudson, New York, 24 March 2022, lot 341 (part).
Literature
S.A.B. Mercer, “The Gorringe Collection of Egyptian Antiquities,” Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, vol. XXXVI, fasc. IV, 1914, p. 178.
S.A.B. Mercer, “Note on the Gorringe Collection,” Ancient Egypt, pt. 2, 1916, p. 50.
J. Capart, “Bronze Figurines of Egyptian Divinities from the Collection of H.H. Gorringe,” Worcester Art Museum Annual, vol. III, 1937-1938, pp. 20, 22, fig. 5.
Exhibited
In storage at the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, 1915-1947; transferred to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for possible purchase, 1947-1949.

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Hannah Solomon
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Lot Essay

Behind The Metropolitan Museum of Art stands the iconic “Cleopatra’s Needle,” a monumental Egyptian obelisk that was brought from Alexandria to New York by naval officer Lieutenant Commander Henry H. Gorringe in the summer of 1880. It was a gift to the United States from Isma’il Pasha, the Egyptian Khedive, for the nation’s neutrality in Britain and France’s struggle for political control over Egypt. While Gorringe was tasked with the transport of the national gift, he had also begun his own personal collection of Egyptian antiquities. Following his death just six years after his task concluded, his collection of Egyptian artifacts, including this Osiris, was inherited by his sister and her family. The collection was relocated to the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts in 1915, and was briefly reunited with “Cleopatra’s Needle” when it was transferred to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1947 for possible purchase.

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