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Lot Essay
“It was one of the ancient Egyptian’s most fervent wishes…not to be separated in the afterlife from wife or husband or children. Clearly a person’s closest family members – what today we call the nuclear family… – were an indispensable part of his or her personality.”
- D. Arnold, When the Pyramids were Built: Egyptian Art of the Old Kingdom, p. 12.
This exquisitely carved pair statue of Nebefwy and his wife Mes-sat belongs to a small corpus of Old Kingdom private statuary depicting the elite of Memphis, Egypt's first unified capital and the administrative and religious centre of the period. It provides insight not only into the mastaba funerary culture of the Memphite region, but also into the life of a single multi-generational family, as conveyed through both the couple’s loving embrace and the unusually extensive inscription identifying them and their son, Meh-er-nefer, who dutifully dedicated it to his parents. Recorded at Hovingham Hall in North Yorkshire since 1778, the pair statue stands among the earliest Egyptian sculptures to enter a British collection, having passed from Ottoman Constantinople to King George III before it was bestowed to Thomas Worsley. Taken together, these qualities establish the Hovingham Hall Pair Statue as both an art-historically significant work and an important early document in the history of collecting Egyptian antiquities.
Nebefwy is depicted in the striding pose, his left leg advanced and his arms held close to the body, with his hands gripping short staves at his sides. His muscular torso is exposed above a short pleated kilt and knotted belt, with the tab drawn up adjacent to the navel. His tight-fitting wig is arranged in tiered rows of curls above his delicately modelled face, with finely carved brows, a short nose, and slightly smiling lips. Mes-sat stands to his proper right in a close-embracing arrangement. Her left arm reaches across his back and rests on Nebefwy’s left shoulder, while her right hand is sensitively placed on his right arm. She wears a tight-fitting, ankle-length garment, and her wig is parted to reveal the natural hairline below. Like her husband, Mes-sat is shown looking directly ahead.
This composition belongs to the well-established Giza-Memphite tradition of husband-and-wife pair statues. Similar examples, all securely associated with Giza mastaba contexts, include those of Ka-pu-ptah and Ioep (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung, inv. no. ÄS 7444; see D. Arnold, op. cit., fig. 87); Nefu and Khenetemsetju (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. no. 31.777; see B. Hornemann, Types of Ancient Egyptian Statuary, vol. II, pl. 405); and Mesi and Senenu (Cairo, inv. no. J. 38670; see H.G. Fischer, “An Elusive Shape within the Fisted Hands of Egyptian Statues,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 10, fig. 5). These monuments reflect a sculptural grammar in which the female is positioned either to the proper right or left of the male figure, with variation in arm placement within a stable formal repertoire. While earlier literature often assumed a normative arrangement placing the woman to the man’s proper left, recent analysis has demonstrated a more even distribution of left–right configurations within the Giza corpus, albeit on a still limited sample (see A.D. Salisbury, “Behind Every Man is a Strong Woman: Reconsidering the Form and Function of Old Kingdom Dyads from Giza,” M.A. thesis, University of Memphis, 2018).
Such pair statues were commonly included in tomb chapels, ensuring the perpetuation of the owner's identity, status, and familial continuity in the afterlife. As D. Arnold explains (op. cit., p. 12), "The most striking way of placing Old Kingdom statues – and the most unusual in relation to practices in other periods of Egyptian history – was to position them in a serdab, a closed chamber [within the mastaba] named after the Arabic word for 'cellar.' The serdab provided the ultimate protection to the statue by hiding it away from view entirely, even from descendants entering the offering chambers of the tomb." Some serdabs feature holes or slots set high in the front walls. These openings were not meant for viewing the statues but rather, as Arnold notes, "for allowing the fragrance of burning incense, and possibly the spells spoken in rituals, to reach the statue.”
The Hovingham Hall Pair Statue is further distinguished by an unusually extensive inscriptional program, preserving the names not only of the principal figures but also of their descendant. Both husband and wife bear the title “King’s Acquaintance,” situating them within the wider courtly and administrative sphere of the Old Kingdom elite. Nebefwy’s name, written with the rare hieroglyph of a swimming man, is best understood as “May he support me,” an uncommon orthographic variant within Old Kingdom onomastics. The inscription across the front of the integral base records the dedication: “It is his eldest son, whom he loves, who made (this) for him – the Companion, Chamberlain, Chief of Elkab, Meh-er-nefer,” thus identifying the statue as a familial commission.
Meh-er-nefer’s name is otherwise known from only two other sources: a papyrus from Gebelein in Upper Egypt, near Elkab (see P. Posener-Kriéger, I papiri di Gebelein: Scavi G. Farina 1935, no. 67, pl. 39), and a related Old Kingdom statue of Meh-er-nefer and his son, also named Meh-er-nefer, likewise from Hovingham Hall and sold at Christie's, London, on 7 July 2022 for £6,014,500. While these two sculptures do not allow the family's genealogy to be reconstructed in full, it seems likely that the elder Meh-er-nefer of the father-and-son statue commissioned the present pair statue in honour of his own parents, Nebefwy and Mes-sat.
Beyond its clear art-historical importance, the Hovingham Hall Pair Statue is remarkable for the circumstances of its transmission, both diplomatic and royal. Arriving in Britain decades before Napoleon’s expedition catalysed broader European interest in ancient Egypt, the statue group serves as a rare index of rapidly evolving attitudes towards Egyptian antiquities in mid-18th century Europe.
The statue was among the earliest Egyptian antiquities to enter Britain, through the agency of Sir James Porter (1710-1786), British ambassador to the Sublime Porte between 1746 and 1762. Constantinople was the administrative and commercial heart of the Ottoman state, bringing together a remarkable concentration of commodities from across its provinces, including Egypt, and the merchants who traded them. Porter’s seat in the imperial capital positioned him within this network, through which Egyptian antiquities – still understood as curiosities rather than archaeological objects – circulated. A crucial, if ancillary, aspect of Porter’s role was supplying his sovereign with rare and valuable objects, and through this channel the statue passed from Ottoman lands to Britain.
Sir James presented the work as a gift to King George III (r. 1760-1820) during the first years of his reign, likely between the king’s accession in 1760 and Porter’s return to England in 1762. George III was widely recognized as unusually learned, his scientific and antiquarian interests largely shaped by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who served as mentor to the future king and later as a close adviser in the early 1760s. Antiquities continued to enter the royal collection during these years, but the king was primarily interested in books, scientific instruments, and coins and medals – all reflecting an Enlightenment-era impulse towards classification.
Within this context, Egyptian artifacts were oddities. Classical antiquity had been admired, collected, and emulated for generations, rooted in the study of Greek and Roman texts, with interest in its material culture intensifying after the systematic excavation of Herculaneum under the Bourbons in 1738. Yet some sixty years before Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs, and well before scientific interest in Egypt emerged, Egyptian objects were seen primarily as curiosities – unfathomably ancient and enigmatic, largely encountered through shabtis, bronzes, and mummified remains that trickled into antiquarian collections by chance.
Large-scale Egyptian sculpture was virtually unknown in England at the time, and it is difficult to know precisely what impact Porter’s Old Kingdom statues would have had at court: certainly admired for their sculptural presence, but otherwise presumably exotic, hard to categorize, perhaps primitive, and altogether perplexing. As Bute’s influence waned by the mid-1760s, George III’s focus increasingly turned to works associated with Britain’s history and its empire. It was likely in this period of shifting focus that he presented the two Old Kingdom statue groups to Thomas Worsley (1711-1778) for display in his newly completed Hovingham Hall in North Yorkshire.
There is reason to believe that the royal gift was a deliberate gesture, for at Hovingham Hall, these two limestone sculptures found their spiritual home. Worsley was a close friend of Lord Bute, whose prominence at court likely shaped Worsley’s own rise. The two met at Eton as schoolboys, sharing enthusiasms for horses and architecture that would shape both their adult lives, and maintained a lively correspondence, particularly as they were designing their estates. Worsley designed the Palladian-style hall himself between 1750 and 1770, inspired by his travels to Florence while bringing his own idiosyncratic touch, including the celebrated indoor riding school built into the entrance hall. King George III held both men in high regard, and the timing of his gift around the completion of Worsley’s decades-long architectural endeavour can hardly be accidental. Rather, the statues were carefully selected, deeply admired by Worsley, and displayed from the outset within an interior conceived to receive them.
The two Old Kingdom statue groups are recorded in the inventory Worsley made of Hovingham Hall in 1778, the year of his death, and appear alongside Giambologna’s Samson and the Philistine, another royal gift, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The inventory lists them as “Two Egyptian idols Isis & Osiris brought by Sir James Porter from Constantinople & given by him to King George III who gave them to me.” Lacking a fuller understanding of Egyptian sculpture, unable to read the inscriptions, and inclined - as 18th century viewers often were - to interpret unfamiliar forms through a mythological lens, Worsley and his contemporaries misidentified the pair. They remained tucked away in Yorkshire, largely unnoticed by scholars and unpublished, until noticed by C.C. Vermeule (later Curator of Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) who listed them in his 1955 “Notes on a New Edition of Michaelis.” Only through the reappraisal by Egyptologists, including Cyril Aldred and I.E.S. Edwards, were the two groups correctly identified.
Far from a stray inclusion within an antiquarian collection and never relegated to the estate’s garden by future generations (for the fate of “The Old Vyne Ramesses,” now in the British Museum, see T. Knox, op. cit.), the Hovingham Hall Pair Statue survives as a powerful sculpture and an astonishingly early Egyptian import into Georgian Britain. The chain of provenance – Ottoman diplomacy, royal gift, continuous display, and eventual scholarly rediscovery – tells a vivid story of a fleeting period of antiquarianism in the Age of Enlightenment, before the surge of Egyptomania to come in the following century.
- D. Arnold, When the Pyramids were Built: Egyptian Art of the Old Kingdom, p. 12.
This exquisitely carved pair statue of Nebefwy and his wife Mes-sat belongs to a small corpus of Old Kingdom private statuary depicting the elite of Memphis, Egypt's first unified capital and the administrative and religious centre of the period. It provides insight not only into the mastaba funerary culture of the Memphite region, but also into the life of a single multi-generational family, as conveyed through both the couple’s loving embrace and the unusually extensive inscription identifying them and their son, Meh-er-nefer, who dutifully dedicated it to his parents. Recorded at Hovingham Hall in North Yorkshire since 1778, the pair statue stands among the earliest Egyptian sculptures to enter a British collection, having passed from Ottoman Constantinople to King George III before it was bestowed to Thomas Worsley. Taken together, these qualities establish the Hovingham Hall Pair Statue as both an art-historically significant work and an important early document in the history of collecting Egyptian antiquities.
Nebefwy is depicted in the striding pose, his left leg advanced and his arms held close to the body, with his hands gripping short staves at his sides. His muscular torso is exposed above a short pleated kilt and knotted belt, with the tab drawn up adjacent to the navel. His tight-fitting wig is arranged in tiered rows of curls above his delicately modelled face, with finely carved brows, a short nose, and slightly smiling lips. Mes-sat stands to his proper right in a close-embracing arrangement. Her left arm reaches across his back and rests on Nebefwy’s left shoulder, while her right hand is sensitively placed on his right arm. She wears a tight-fitting, ankle-length garment, and her wig is parted to reveal the natural hairline below. Like her husband, Mes-sat is shown looking directly ahead.
This composition belongs to the well-established Giza-Memphite tradition of husband-and-wife pair statues. Similar examples, all securely associated with Giza mastaba contexts, include those of Ka-pu-ptah and Ioep (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Ägyptisch-Orientalische Sammlung, inv. no. ÄS 7444; see D. Arnold, op. cit., fig. 87); Nefu and Khenetemsetju (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. no. 31.777; see B. Hornemann, Types of Ancient Egyptian Statuary, vol. II, pl. 405); and Mesi and Senenu (Cairo, inv. no. J. 38670; see H.G. Fischer, “An Elusive Shape within the Fisted Hands of Egyptian Statues,” Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 10, fig. 5). These monuments reflect a sculptural grammar in which the female is positioned either to the proper right or left of the male figure, with variation in arm placement within a stable formal repertoire. While earlier literature often assumed a normative arrangement placing the woman to the man’s proper left, recent analysis has demonstrated a more even distribution of left–right configurations within the Giza corpus, albeit on a still limited sample (see A.D. Salisbury, “Behind Every Man is a Strong Woman: Reconsidering the Form and Function of Old Kingdom Dyads from Giza,” M.A. thesis, University of Memphis, 2018).
Such pair statues were commonly included in tomb chapels, ensuring the perpetuation of the owner's identity, status, and familial continuity in the afterlife. As D. Arnold explains (op. cit., p. 12), "The most striking way of placing Old Kingdom statues – and the most unusual in relation to practices in other periods of Egyptian history – was to position them in a serdab, a closed chamber [within the mastaba] named after the Arabic word for 'cellar.' The serdab provided the ultimate protection to the statue by hiding it away from view entirely, even from descendants entering the offering chambers of the tomb." Some serdabs feature holes or slots set high in the front walls. These openings were not meant for viewing the statues but rather, as Arnold notes, "for allowing the fragrance of burning incense, and possibly the spells spoken in rituals, to reach the statue.”
The Hovingham Hall Pair Statue is further distinguished by an unusually extensive inscriptional program, preserving the names not only of the principal figures but also of their descendant. Both husband and wife bear the title “King’s Acquaintance,” situating them within the wider courtly and administrative sphere of the Old Kingdom elite. Nebefwy’s name, written with the rare hieroglyph of a swimming man, is best understood as “May he support me,” an uncommon orthographic variant within Old Kingdom onomastics. The inscription across the front of the integral base records the dedication: “It is his eldest son, whom he loves, who made (this) for him – the Companion, Chamberlain, Chief of Elkab, Meh-er-nefer,” thus identifying the statue as a familial commission.
Meh-er-nefer’s name is otherwise known from only two other sources: a papyrus from Gebelein in Upper Egypt, near Elkab (see P. Posener-Kriéger, I papiri di Gebelein: Scavi G. Farina 1935, no. 67, pl. 39), and a related Old Kingdom statue of Meh-er-nefer and his son, also named Meh-er-nefer, likewise from Hovingham Hall and sold at Christie's, London, on 7 July 2022 for £6,014,500. While these two sculptures do not allow the family's genealogy to be reconstructed in full, it seems likely that the elder Meh-er-nefer of the father-and-son statue commissioned the present pair statue in honour of his own parents, Nebefwy and Mes-sat.
Beyond its clear art-historical importance, the Hovingham Hall Pair Statue is remarkable for the circumstances of its transmission, both diplomatic and royal. Arriving in Britain decades before Napoleon’s expedition catalysed broader European interest in ancient Egypt, the statue group serves as a rare index of rapidly evolving attitudes towards Egyptian antiquities in mid-18th century Europe.
The statue was among the earliest Egyptian antiquities to enter Britain, through the agency of Sir James Porter (1710-1786), British ambassador to the Sublime Porte between 1746 and 1762. Constantinople was the administrative and commercial heart of the Ottoman state, bringing together a remarkable concentration of commodities from across its provinces, including Egypt, and the merchants who traded them. Porter’s seat in the imperial capital positioned him within this network, through which Egyptian antiquities – still understood as curiosities rather than archaeological objects – circulated. A crucial, if ancillary, aspect of Porter’s role was supplying his sovereign with rare and valuable objects, and through this channel the statue passed from Ottoman lands to Britain.
Sir James presented the work as a gift to King George III (r. 1760-1820) during the first years of his reign, likely between the king’s accession in 1760 and Porter’s return to England in 1762. George III was widely recognized as unusually learned, his scientific and antiquarian interests largely shaped by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who served as mentor to the future king and later as a close adviser in the early 1760s. Antiquities continued to enter the royal collection during these years, but the king was primarily interested in books, scientific instruments, and coins and medals – all reflecting an Enlightenment-era impulse towards classification.
Within this context, Egyptian artifacts were oddities. Classical antiquity had been admired, collected, and emulated for generations, rooted in the study of Greek and Roman texts, with interest in its material culture intensifying after the systematic excavation of Herculaneum under the Bourbons in 1738. Yet some sixty years before Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs, and well before scientific interest in Egypt emerged, Egyptian objects were seen primarily as curiosities – unfathomably ancient and enigmatic, largely encountered through shabtis, bronzes, and mummified remains that trickled into antiquarian collections by chance.
Large-scale Egyptian sculpture was virtually unknown in England at the time, and it is difficult to know precisely what impact Porter’s Old Kingdom statues would have had at court: certainly admired for their sculptural presence, but otherwise presumably exotic, hard to categorize, perhaps primitive, and altogether perplexing. As Bute’s influence waned by the mid-1760s, George III’s focus increasingly turned to works associated with Britain’s history and its empire. It was likely in this period of shifting focus that he presented the two Old Kingdom statue groups to Thomas Worsley (1711-1778) for display in his newly completed Hovingham Hall in North Yorkshire.
There is reason to believe that the royal gift was a deliberate gesture, for at Hovingham Hall, these two limestone sculptures found their spiritual home. Worsley was a close friend of Lord Bute, whose prominence at court likely shaped Worsley’s own rise. The two met at Eton as schoolboys, sharing enthusiasms for horses and architecture that would shape both their adult lives, and maintained a lively correspondence, particularly as they were designing their estates. Worsley designed the Palladian-style hall himself between 1750 and 1770, inspired by his travels to Florence while bringing his own idiosyncratic touch, including the celebrated indoor riding school built into the entrance hall. King George III held both men in high regard, and the timing of his gift around the completion of Worsley’s decades-long architectural endeavour can hardly be accidental. Rather, the statues were carefully selected, deeply admired by Worsley, and displayed from the outset within an interior conceived to receive them.
The two Old Kingdom statue groups are recorded in the inventory Worsley made of Hovingham Hall in 1778, the year of his death, and appear alongside Giambologna’s Samson and the Philistine, another royal gift, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The inventory lists them as “Two Egyptian idols Isis & Osiris brought by Sir James Porter from Constantinople & given by him to King George III who gave them to me.” Lacking a fuller understanding of Egyptian sculpture, unable to read the inscriptions, and inclined - as 18th century viewers often were - to interpret unfamiliar forms through a mythological lens, Worsley and his contemporaries misidentified the pair. They remained tucked away in Yorkshire, largely unnoticed by scholars and unpublished, until noticed by C.C. Vermeule (later Curator of Classical Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) who listed them in his 1955 “Notes on a New Edition of Michaelis.” Only through the reappraisal by Egyptologists, including Cyril Aldred and I.E.S. Edwards, were the two groups correctly identified.
Far from a stray inclusion within an antiquarian collection and never relegated to the estate’s garden by future generations (for the fate of “The Old Vyne Ramesses,” now in the British Museum, see T. Knox, op. cit.), the Hovingham Hall Pair Statue survives as a powerful sculpture and an astonishingly early Egyptian import into Georgian Britain. The chain of provenance – Ottoman diplomacy, royal gift, continuous display, and eventual scholarly rediscovery – tells a vivid story of a fleeting period of antiquarianism in the Age of Enlightenment, before the surge of Egyptomania to come in the following century.