Day 11 - Relief of fecundity figure





January 23, 2018

 The image I want to write about in Gallery 110 strikes me almost immediately upon entry.  (If I'm being honest, I should acknowledge that I was feeling a little pressed for time today so may have selected something more quickly than I would have otherwise. But I don't think so.) It's described as a fecundity figure from Dynasty 12, ca. 1961-1917 B.C.

 What immediately catches my attention is the sexual ambiguity of the figure. It is a man, I am quite sure, because of the beard, albeit a false one. (Are women ever depicted with false beards in Egyptian art? Not that I know of. ) But his breast is pendulous and his belly rounded - as if appropriate for nursing, or for child-bearing.  In these ways, he contrasts with conventional images of Egyptian men, with their chiseled, tapering torsos.

 His face isn't particularly old - his cheek has  some roundness to it - but the sagging breast and belly make me think of the physical attributes of an older man. (How often, especially as I grow older, I have come to think that aging blurs the outward signs of gender,  as women cut their hair short, men lose hair on their legs, and both men and women lose height and gain bellies,and come to look more and more similar.) But if he is older, how is he a symbol of fertility? I think of my conversation with David about why, in comedy from Roman times forward, the old suitor is a figure of fun and loses out to the handsome young swain who weds the young woman, ensuring a hapoy ending (procreation, survival of the species, etc.). In contrast, tragedy means death. But this figure seems to contradict that facile dichotomy - as, I suppose, do May-December marriages, whether made for love or money, that result in progeny.

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