Antiquities and Ancient Art: Including Property from the Estates of Andrew C. Ware and Iris C. Love

Provenance:

Michael Waltz, Hermes Antiken, Munich, prior to 1979.

Anton Groth, Zurich, acquired from the above, 26 June 1979; thence by descent.

Private Collection, Zurich, 2012-2017.

Phoenix Ancient Art, New York 2017 (Crystal 7, no. 5); where acquired by the present owner.

[Art Loss Register no. S00123170]

This statuette is carved from a single block with integral plinth and back-pillar. The woman stands frontally with feet together, arms straight and palms to the thighs, wearing a close-fitting sheath with a deep V-bodice and a centrally parted, striated shoulder-length wig. The blocky massing, pillar height terminating at the shoulders, schematic hands and toes, and restrained modeling of the torso place the work within the corpus of Old Kingdom private tomb statuary for women, particularly of Dynasty V. Its scale, integral support, and preserved polychromy align it with standing female figures in museum collections at Cairo and Paris catalogued by Borchardt and Ziegler.

Old Kingdom tomb statues served as ka-images (durable surrogates that received offerings and sustained the owner in perpetuity within the tomb chapel). While most female figures of the period appear as consorts in pairs or family groups, single-standing women are less common and signal autonomous commemoration. The present figure’s red flesh tone (more often used for men) belongs to a known but exceptional palette that emphasizes vitality and status; Ziegler cites parallel instances, including the well-known pair of Raherka and Meresankh in the Louvre. The individualized facial structure and carefully ordered wig further underscore the workshop’s attention to a specific woman, consonant with the broader Old Kingdom milieu in which elite women could hold significant titles and authority, epitomized by figures such as Khentkaus I at Giza, sometimes regarded as a ruler in her own right at the turn of Dynasties IV–V.

For comparable single standing female statues in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, see Ludwig Borchardt, Statuen und Statuetten von Königen und Privatleuten im Museum von Kairo, Cairo, 1911, pp. 100–103 (with related examples); For corpus discussion of Old Kingdom private sculpture and comparable female coiffures and dress, see Christiane Ziegler, Les statues égyptiennes de l’Ancien Empire, Paris, 1997, pp. 123–137; and for the exceptional use of red female flesh and discussion of individuality in Old Kingdom statuary; for the pair of Raherka and Meresankh, Musée du Louvre, see Christiane Ziegler, Les statues égyptiennes de l’Ancien Empire, Paris, 1997, cover illustration and pp. 218–219, 264, 270–271.