Day 3 - Sculpture of a couple



January 5, 2018 
Gallery 102 has many memorable Old Kingdom artifacts. I'm particularly struck by: a small bust of a monkey head- a god, I presume, a broad sly smile indicated by a long incised line carved under his flat nose; by a free-standing statue of a kneeling captive, his arms bound with rope behind him; and by a repro of a painting of six geese.

 What I want to write about is a double statue of a man and a woman, perhaps 32 inches high. The first thing that strikes me is that while she is smaller than he, the disparity is not nearly so extreme as it is in many other double statues. Their pose indicates deep affection - she stands to his left, her right arm encircling his waist; his left hand covers her left breast in a way that seems more protective than amorous. Both are wearing coiled wigs; her natural hair, parted in the middle, shows below her wig. They have rounded cheeks and rather flat noses; while I wouldn't describe their features as Negroid, I wouldn't describe them as non-Negroid, either. The rather deep  "marionette lines" around their noses suggest that they are not old, but not young. She is wearing a dress that comes down to her calves, but her navel, triangular pubis, and knees are suggested underneath. His chest is bare, but he wears a skirt that comes down to above his rather knobby knees and that I take to be linen; it is finely, crisply pleated. It's bound by a belt with an ornament (a clasp?) that appears to be the head of a bird with outstretched wings.  There are traces of brown paint on his shoulder; paint also rims the eyes of both figures (hers more so).

 The two figures emerge from a stele in back of them, at the base of which are a number of hieroglyphs: birds, an eye, a circle, a half-circle, something that looks like it might be a wheatstalk.

 I think what I respond to is the loving, non-hieratic appearance of the pair. The caption indicates that they were acquaintances of the pharaoh and were named Memi and Sabu. (I assume the hieroglyphs tell us that.)

—
 It’s good that I didn’t opt to write about the monkey, because after I read the information, it turns out not to be a monkey at all but a hippo!  She is also a goddess, however, the goddess of childbearing.  Oh well….

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