AN EGYPTIAN BLACK DIORITE MALE BUST

The male is rendered with a short baggy wig and a sidelock, indicating that he represented a priest or member of the royal family. The fragment was likely broken away from a dyad. For private portraiture in the Middle Kingdom see A. Oppenheim et. al. (eds.), Ancient Egypt Transformed, New York, 2015, nos. 89 and 126: "From the late Middle Kingdom to the Second Intermediate Period, Egyptians manufactured a large number of small statuettes of private people, usually out of dark stones such as diorite, gabro, basalt, serpentine, and graywacke...they were sometimes placed inside memorial chapels and therefore must have served functions comparable to those of stelae and false doors: they commemorated private individuals and received offerings for them".