Theatrical mask for offering

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This mask and the mask 26.7.1020 are too small and brittle to have served as actual theater masks. They refer to the god Dionysus, patron of the theater and god of rebirth; in Egypt he was equated with Osiris. Terracotta theater masks are found in burials and sanctuaries in Greece, in sanctuaries and as garden decorations in Italy. In Egypt, they are known only from burials, as offerings to Osiris/Dionysus. Terracotta masks from Antinoopolis in Middle Egypt probably originate in tombs, and a terracotta theater mask was found in a Roman Period chapel over a burial at Hawara. The masks 26.7.1020-.1021 and the ram 26.7.1019 are said to have been part of a find of numerous faience objects at Arsinoe, capital of the Fayum region.

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