Day 1 - Female fertility figure




January 2, 2018 
I guessed correctly that the lowest-numbered gallery would be in the wing that houses the Met's Egyptian collection. Gallery 100 turns out to be an introductory gallery whose centerpiece is a large temple, cut away to reveal the intricate brickwork involving squared-off stones of various sizes. The gallery also features a pink granite life-sized recumbent lion and a stela, also pink granite,  incised with images that include Horus, the sun and a basket (with  hieroglyphs representing the name of the ruler), and a depiction of palace architecture, also very squared-off and rectangular.

 But the image that immediately siezes me is a small ceramic woman, perhaps eight inches high and six inches long, sitting with her legs outstretched in front of her, her hands cupping her breasts. She is nude except for wristlets and ankle bands. I'm struck by how archaic she looks, and I think she must be a fertility symbol. While her torso is slim. her hips are quite wide. Most of her body is the natural color of the clay, but her hair (or wig?), formed by clay that has been added to the original figure, has been painted black, and a dark painted rectangle indicates her pubic hair. Blue paint has been applied to the area around her eyes - an early representation of kohl, perhaps?  There are animals and other small forms painted on her body.

 Perhaps, given the rise of the Me Too movement, it was inevitable that I would choose this figure as the subject of my first entry. But to me, anyway, it expresses just how powerful a force sexuality is, and how it has been portrayed in this way from the Neolithic period forward.

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I read the caption and note that the object is from the Naqada II period, 3600-3350 B.C., and that the painted images in her body reprsent tattoos! If sexuality has always been with us, so have tattoos, apparently.  I also note that the Naqada culture had various funerary practices.  This makes me wonder where the image was found.

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