LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXV-XXVI, 712-525 B.C.

Details

AN EGYPTIAN LIMESTONE RELIEF
LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXV-XXVI, 712-525 B.C.
Carved in wafer-thin raised relief, recalling Old Kingdom style, with six male offering bearers all wearing short, belted kilts, carrying and arranging vessels filled with liquid and solid food offerings for a tomb, their echeloned wigs, leg musculature and feet finely detailed, the single handled vessels with incised wavy bands indicating banded alabaster, the top portion of a lower register visible at the bottom, the hieroglyph for "myrrh" at the lower right
43½ in. (110.5 cm.) long

Provenance

Swiss Private Collection, acquired in the 1940s.

Lot Essay

The exaggerated size of the vessels suggests a Late Period date. So too the vessel shapes, many of which did not come into existence until Dynasty XVIII. The shoulders of the offering bearers are depicted in a variety of styles, from the very wide Old Kingdom style on the second figure from the left to the folded-over New Kingdom style on the pair to the right. This is a result of what Cooney called, "the archaizing impulse of Late Egyptian art." See p. 394 in Berman, Catalogue of Egyptian Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art.

More from Antiquities

View All