Figure of an Asiatic captive

Figure of an Asiatic captive

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This ivory depicts a fettered captive. His pointed beard, facial creases, and elaborately patterned garment mark him as an Asiatic. He stands with bent legs, the lower body shown in profile facing to his left, the upper body and face presented in frontal view. Ivory inlays were often used to decorate thrones and chairs. However, the frontal depiction of the foreigner finds its closest comparison a footstool found in Tutankhamun’s tomb (JdE 62044). There, a row of bound captives decorates the sides of the footstool, in which two are depicted frontally. Resting his feet on such images, the king would express in a visually brutal fashion his dominion over other lands.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Figure of an Asiatic captiveFigure of an Asiatic captiveFigure of an Asiatic captiveFigure of an Asiatic captiveFigure of an Asiatic captive

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.