Day 8 - Small wooden bust of a woman




























January 16, 2018

 Gallery 107 holds the famous faience figure of William the hippo. The inscription says that hippo figures were placed in tombs because they represent regeneration; the hippo was the goddess of childbirth, as I noted earlier. There is a fascinating display on how to read hieroglyphs (I could actually read a few before my trip to Egypt, but I've forgotten them all), and I learned that hieroglyphs were also written in a cursive script that is a simplification of the original form. Reminds me a bit of cursive and printed Hebrew, though of course Hebrew letters don't have both phonetic and denotative significance.

I want to write about  a very small (maybe 2 1/2 inches high) wooden bust of a woman. The man who excavated it for the Met in the early 1920s identified it as the head of a man, but I don't see how that was possible. Maybe it's easier to get it right now because we are much more accustomed than he was to seeing young black women with natural hair. The hair depicted here is close-cropped and curly. Her face is carefully modeled, with smooth cheeks, high cheekbones, and notable pouches under her eyes, The eyes themselves, which, were originally inlaid (as were the eybrows,) are huge, almond-shaped, and rimmed with black. A slight smile plays on her lips. Her nose is flat. She strikes me as warm and approachable, although that is, of course, only my projection.  She is approximately 4040 years old, dating from 2020-2000 B.C.

 We think of Nefertiti as the epitome of female beauty in Egyptian representations, and I wonder how much of that is because of her Caucasian features. If we saw this young woman on the streets of New York, we would probably "read" her as African-American.   She lacks Nefertiti's cool perfection, but I think she is lovely. How nice that our concepts of female beauty have expanded!

Comments

  1. Jennie TonicFebruary 27, 2018 at 7:15 PM

    I could see it as a boy, maybe not a man. It is definitely a warm face. The eyebrows seem to convey interest--when you cover up the features and look at them one at a time, they don't necessarily express what they express all together.

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