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Lot Essay
Carved in shallow relief on plaster, and painted in red and black, this fragment of a tomb relief in the post-Amarna style depicts high officials of the Egyptian court at the head of a funeral procession. The two figures in front with shaved heads wear the distinctive high-waisted garment of the viziers of Upper and Lower Egypt; one also wears the heavy gold necklace associated with his role. The right hands of both viziers are cupped at their mouths in affecting gestures of quiet grief; their left arms are bent back with hands turned down. The man immediately behind the viziers wears a black wig and elaborate dress, and holds his hand in a similar gesture, while a fourth figure and portions of a fifth fill out the procession. A portion of a hieroglyphic inscription (now not visible) recorded a century ago on this fragment shows that the vertical registers of inscription provided the names and titles of some of these individuals: “True King’s scribe, whom he loves (or, his beloved), Overseer…”
Although scenes of female mourners are well-known features of Egyptian tomb scenes of the New Kingdom, images of men in attitudes of grief are less common. The majority of such scenes depicting high officials in gestures of mourning derive from the Memphis region, and the most elaborately detailed of such scenes were produced during a short period following the reign of Akhenaten. The calmer poses of high officials, including viziers and other elaborately dressed men of high status, contrast with the more extreme gestures of grief demonstrated by lower-status men and women elsewhere in the same scenes. The most expressively-rendered examples of elite male mourners known derive from the tomb of Ptahemhat-Ti at Saqqara, including the famous Berlin “Mourners Relief,” where the contrast between the composed gestures of sadness of the elite men are in stark contrast to the extreme expressions of the lower-status men. Similar male gestures of grief are also featured on a fragment in Copenhagen and another in Munich, extensively discussed by J. Berlandini (“Cortège funéraire de la fin XVIIIe dynastie: Staatliche Museen Munich ÄS 7127,” Bulletin de la Société française d’Égyptologie, vol. 134, pp. 30-49).
Despite the alleged provenance of this piece from Deir el-Medina, the use of plaster-coated sandstone implies that the unknown tomb from which it derived was located further south in the zone of natural occurrence of this material, thus perhaps el Kab, Gebel el-Silsileh, or another southern site. Viscount Henri de Murard, who acquired this relief fragment, accompanied the geologist Adrien Arcelin on an expedition to Egypt in 1869, where they encountered prehistoric flint tool at sites throughout southern Egypt, including El Kab and Aswan, locales more likely to have been the source of the present fragment (see Y. Tristant, “Adrien Arcelin (1838-1904), Ernest-Théodore Hamy (1842-1908), et François Lenormant (1837-1883). La découverte du passé préhistorique de l’Égypte,” Archéonil, vol. 17, pp. 8-26).
Although scenes of female mourners are well-known features of Egyptian tomb scenes of the New Kingdom, images of men in attitudes of grief are less common. The majority of such scenes depicting high officials in gestures of mourning derive from the Memphis region, and the most elaborately detailed of such scenes were produced during a short period following the reign of Akhenaten. The calmer poses of high officials, including viziers and other elaborately dressed men of high status, contrast with the more extreme gestures of grief demonstrated by lower-status men and women elsewhere in the same scenes. The most expressively-rendered examples of elite male mourners known derive from the tomb of Ptahemhat-Ti at Saqqara, including the famous Berlin “Mourners Relief,” where the contrast between the composed gestures of sadness of the elite men are in stark contrast to the extreme expressions of the lower-status men. Similar male gestures of grief are also featured on a fragment in Copenhagen and another in Munich, extensively discussed by J. Berlandini (“Cortège funéraire de la fin XVIIIe dynastie: Staatliche Museen Munich ÄS 7127,” Bulletin de la Société française d’Égyptologie, vol. 134, pp. 30-49).
Despite the alleged provenance of this piece from Deir el-Medina, the use of plaster-coated sandstone implies that the unknown tomb from which it derived was located further south in the zone of natural occurrence of this material, thus perhaps el Kab, Gebel el-Silsileh, or another southern site. Viscount Henri de Murard, who acquired this relief fragment, accompanied the geologist Adrien Arcelin on an expedition to Egypt in 1869, where they encountered prehistoric flint tool at sites throughout southern Egypt, including El Kab and Aswan, locales more likely to have been the source of the present fragment (see Y. Tristant, “Adrien Arcelin (1838-1904), Ernest-Théodore Hamy (1842-1908), et François Lenormant (1837-1883). La découverte du passé préhistorique de l’Égypte,” Archéonil, vol. 17, pp. 8-26).