LATE PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 2ND-1ST CENTURY B.C.

Sculpted in finely-polished granodiorite, the official is depicted wearing a short-sleeved, round-necked garment decorated with a stripe on each sleeve, a wrap-around skirt with dentate borders, and a serrated shawl draped asymmetrically around the body and held in place by his left hand positioned across his body. The name of the official for whom this statue was commissioned is not preserved, since the inscription on the back-pillar was intentionally erased in antiquity. For a statue of Pakhom, Governor of Dendera, displaying a similar arrangement of garments, see the figure in The Detroit Institute of Arts, no. 32 in R.S. Bianchi, et al., Cleopatra’s Egypt, Age of the Ptolemies. A nearly identical torso was excavated in the Iseum Campense in Rome in 1987 (see no. 347 in S. Walker and P. Higgs, Cleopatra of Egypt, from History to Myth).