Ripe barley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Beginning in the Old Kingdom, the harvest of grain is a typical motif in private tombs. Although temple scenes showing the pharaoh ritually cutting stalks of grain, usually held by a priest, are known from other periods, fields of the living plant are unknown in royal or temple architecture except during the Amarna Period, when representations of wild animals and living plants were common in both palaces and temples. This fragment gives no clue as to its original context. The ears of barley are lifesize and have been very naturalistically carved so that they seem to bend in a gentle breeze coming from the left. The scale and the superb quality of the relief suggests that the block formed part of a prominent scene, perhaps filling a role similar to that of the wild animals greeting the sunrise (1985.328.21)

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