LATE PERIOD TO PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 332-30 B.C.

Details

AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE GROUP OF TWO WRESTLING MONKEYS
LATE PERIOD TO PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 332-30 B.C.
3 ½ in. (8.9 cm.) high

Provenance

with Charles D. Kelekian (1900-1982), New York.
Acquired by the current owner from the above, New York, 1973.

Literature

W.K. Simpson, The Face of Egypt: Permanence and Change, Katonah, 1977, no. 68.
P. Koob, Divine, Domestic and Desert Animals in Ancient Egyptian Art, Greenwich, 1979, no. 65.
F.D. Friedman, ed., Gifts of the Nile, Ancient Egyptian Faience, New York, 1998, pp. 144 and 232, no. 134.

Exhibited

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 10 December 1973-2 September 1983 (Loan no. 722.1973).
Katonah Gallery and the Dallas Museum of Art, The Face of Egypt, Permanence and Change in Egyptian Art, 13 March-28 August 1977.
Greenwich, Connecticut, Greenwich Library, Divine, Domestic and Desert Animals in Ancient Egyptian Art, 4 January-4 March 1979.
New Haven, The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 1984-1986.
Cleveland Museum of Art and elsewhere, Gifts of the Nile, Ancient Egyptian Faience, 19 May-5 July 1998.

Lot Essay

According to R.S. Bianchi (p. 232 in F.D. Friedman, ed., op. cit.), this sculptural group is "unique in ancient Egyptian art, in that no parallels exist in any medium and depictions in the round of human wrestlers are very rare indeed." Bianchi postulates that an interpretation of this wrestling iconography may relate to "the recurring ancient Egyptian cyclical conflicts in which opposing cosmic forces are brought into equilibrium."

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