Nursing woman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This woman sits on the ground with one knee raised. Against the hammock of cloth formed by her skirt stretched over her knee she holds a child whose yellow skin indicates she is a girl. With one hand the woman holds the child's head, while with the other she offers her breast to the child. The child's head is tilted back, either to gaze at the woman as nursing children may do, or perhaps in frustration as she cannot reach the breast. Behind the woman a red-painted and therefore male child kneels and pulls her second breast beneath her arm so that he can nurse, too. Among Old Kingdom serving statuettes, women with children are a non-standard subject; indeed this is the only example depicting nursing. Serving women with children are seen more often in reliefs: in one tomb a child clings to his mother's back while she grinds grain, and nearby another woman nurses a child while she tends baking bread. The fact that the woman in the statuette here wears a white kerchief as do so many of the women in food preparation tasks, presumably to keep flour and such from their hair, may imply that this woman was involved in such tasks when she takes a moment to care for the children.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art