- Small sculptures like this have a little magnetism.
- It makes you come close and
- admire and imagine things about it.
- It’s a group of three males
- from about 1340 B.C., the Amarna period. It’s a period famed for naturalism.
- You can see that in the slumped bodies and the gestures.
- The man in the middle has his arm around the
- boy as if he’s drawing him close to him and kind of protecting him,
- and then the two men are holding hands. That’s a very
- beautiful holding of hands, with one man’s clasping the other man’s hand lying flat.
- Every face is different. The man on the left has a rather lined, heavy face, and the corners of his mouth are even drooping.
- And the man in the middle looks more equable and calm.
- And the boy has a little boy’s small mouth. You start saying, “Who were they, and what are their personalities?”
- We actually know these statues were used in domestic contexts,
- in little house shrines, to show devotion to an ancestor, and keep on
- asking for their protection in life. After spending time with it, I think
- that the man in the middle is the person who gives us access into what’s going on.
- The man on his right is probably an esteemed ancestor. He has a fancy wig,
- he has very elaborate
- clothes, and
- a handkerchief that he’s holding. From the side
- you see he has a wide stride.
- On the right, I imagine that is the middle man’s little son.
- And he wants that child to receive the blessings that
- accrue from his attention to the elder. It might have stood in
- the middle man’s house, and then it might have been kept by
- the son’s family. You know, handed down, taking on different identities through time, too.
- That’s a story, but it’s something like that.
- It’s really a fascinating statue that just puts all of these
- questions in your face. You empathize, you want to
- understand it. It reminds me
- of the way we relate to old family snapshots.
- We cherish them, and
- pore over them for some clues to
- draw us close to those people.
SnapshotMarsha Hill
Statue of two men and a boy that served as a domestic icon, New Kingdom, Amarna Period, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten, ca. 1353–1336 B.C.
Egypt
Limestone, paint
Rogers Fund, 1911 (11.150.21)
Egypt
Limestone, paint
Rogers Fund, 1911 (11.150.21)
Episode Tags
Marsha Hill, curatorMarsha Hill, curatorClose
