Unknown Woman from a Pair Statue

Unknown Woman from a Pair Statue

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Once a limestone statue representing a couple, only the upper half of the female figure survives. Originally they couple was seated, with the lady’s right arm around her husband’s waist, and the left bent at the elbow. The lady’s attire and hairstyle are typical of the fashion after the second half of the 18th Dynasty. She wears an elaborate envelopping wig and a pleated wrap-around garment. Traces of red paint remain on the face and the neck. The back was roughly cut away. This fragmentary statue of a couple belongs to a well-known tradition of New Kingdom private statuary. The sculpture’s quality, combined with the body’s morphology, suggest a date in the late 18th Dynasty, but a slighty posterior date in the early 19th Dynasty is also possible. Stylistically- and typologically-related artworks discovered in the necropoleis of Saqqara and Asyut suggest that this pair statue was commisionned by members of the elite to adorn their tomb chapel.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Unknown Woman from a Pair StatueUnknown Woman from a Pair StatueUnknown Woman from a Pair StatueUnknown Woman from a Pair StatueUnknown Woman from a Pair Statue

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.