AN EGYPTIAN WOOD FERTILITY FIGURE

MIDDLE KINGDOM, DYNASTY XI, 2040-1991 B.C.

細節

AN EGYPTIAN WOOD FERTILITY FIGURE
MIDDLE KINGDOM, DYNASTY XI, 2040-1991 B.C.
Both sides of the paddle-shaped body painted in black and red, wearing a broad collar and a striped tunic with a broad checker-pattern hem, its straps crossing in back, exposing the enlarged, stippled pubic triangle below, a diminutive Taweret to the right, a serpent head at the base on the reverse, the head fashioned from a coil of string, the hair composed of string threaded with mud and faience beads
7 1/8 in. (18.1 cm.) high

來源

with Marianne Maspero, Paris, since the 1970s.
Acquired by the owner in 1997.

展覽

San Antonio Museum of Art, April 1997-1999.
San Bernardino, Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum, periodically until August 2005.

拍品專文

This type of fertility figure, the so-called "paddle doll," dates primarily to the Eleventh Dynasty but continues to be made through the Middle Kingdom and possibly as late as the early Eighteenth Dynasty. Due to the exaggeration of the pubic area, it has been suggested that they served as "concubines of the dead." More likely, they were magical implements to assure fertility, as evinced by the presence of Taweret, a goddess associated with childbirth, on this and other examples. For other paddle dolls see no. 14 in Capel and Markoe, eds., Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven, Women in Ancient Egypt, and no. 21 in Bourriau, Pharaohs and Mortals, Egyptian Art in the Middle Kingdom.