Day 4 - Animals being carried to the altar













January 8, 2018 
I need to consult my map of the Met. What I took to be Gallery 102 turns out, in fact, to be Gallery 103, while 102 is the tomb of Perneb, a hgh official of the 5th Dynasty whose job, it appears, was seeng to the robing and crowning of the ruler. Sort of a glorified butler?

 The tomb was brought over from Saqqara, not far from Cairo. Much of the interior is dark, but the well-lit "centerpiece," so to speak, is a chamber about 4 feet wide, 6 feet long, and maybe 9 feet high, and vividly painted. Three rows of priests and servants are depicted on each of the long walls. There appear to be nine figures in each row, so 54 in all, and they are all bringing offerings to Perneb to keep him well provisioned in the afterlife. 
The figures I like most are three animals, which appear to be a young goat (or gazelle?), a sheep (or calf?), and an old goat with a long beard. Brown-skinned, bewigged servants with the familiar frontal-facing chest and arms and sidewards-facing heads and arms hold the animals easily in their arms. The young goat is wide-eyed and maybe a bit worried, as well it should be. The sheep  or calf appears a bit calmer, but what's interesting is that the back hand of the servant in front of the one holding the sheep, which is outstretched to support a tray holding something, also covers the animal's mouth, as if to silence a bleat. The old billy goat looks stoic.

 While the human figures don't appear to be very individuated, the animals certainly are!

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 21, 2018 at 4:40 PM

    Hard to see the detail on the animal faces on my screen. Guess you felt the goat's anticipation of pain

    ReplyDelete

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