Day 30 - Relief of Sety making an offering
March 9, 2018
Gallery 129 moves back in time to approximately 1290 B.C., displaying reliefs acquired by the Met that come from the memorial chapel that Sety built for his father, Ramesses I, at Abydos. Or rather, most of the reliefs were acquired by J. Pierpont Morgan, who then left them to the Met. Morgan was able to purchase them because they were found on private land and for that reason could be sold. That's one way a country's cultural patrimony is lost, I guess.
I traveled to Abydos seven years ago, but I don't know that I ever fully realized that the site was sacred to Osiris. I wish that, much earlier in my forays into the Egyptian collection, I'd seen captions to remind me that Osiris was the god of the underworld but also of resurrection, as represented by the sun's daily journey and by the yearly cycle of sowing and harvesting. Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, governed the land of the living. While a pharaoh was alive, he was identified with Horus (as I suggested in my last entry without fully understanding the phenomenon); after he died, he was thought to become Osiris,
Perhaps today, my 70th birthday, is an apt time to be reminded of how much I don't know.
Today's work of art is part of the relief. It shows an image of Sety, perhaps 2 and 1/2 feet high, kneeling on a platform and holding up a tray on which there is a statuette of himself holding a jar containing myrrh that he is offering to a cult symbol of Osiris, which looks like a tall beehive on top of a raised stand. In back of the Osiris symbol is a relief of Horus, his right arm raised in apparent benediction. (I couldn't fit the cult symbol or the Horus image into my picture, unfortunately.)
Two things strike me as odd. First is the idea that Sety is holding a statuette of himself, rather than just offering the myrrh directly.. What does that signify (for surely it has symbolic meaning)? Does Sety perhaps recognize that his own image is to be venerated, and that he himself is godlike? I also wonder why Sety and mini-Sety wear different crowns-- Sety's more like a swim cap, mini-Sety's more like a bishop 's mitre--though both crowns are adorned with snake figures.
The second thing can't fail to strike anyone who has spent any time with Egyptian reliefs, and that's why the sculptors couldn't seem to figure out how to depict right and left hands accurately -- or rather, why they depicted them as they did. The thumbs on the two hands seem to be interchangeable and the positions of the hands impossibly contorted. I try to make these shapes with my own hands, and I can't. I'm sure this was an artistic convention, but what was its purpose?
In this image, it's also hard to "read" Sety's left and right legs. That's because they are in the same level of relief - the left leg is farther back, but it's not more recessed for that reason. It's also because both limbs are covered by a fine pleated garment. While the left thigh is clearly visible, the right one, which is closer to us, is obscured by the garment. Interestingly, the statuette is also kneeling, but there's no mistaking which leg is forward and which back. The statuette wears a much simpler garment that resembles a loincloth, so that helps us see the positions of its legs more clearly.
Before I came to the Egyptian wing today, I went to an excellent gallery talk given by the curator of a new show on golden and other precious objects of the pre-Columbian Americas. The curator reminded me that mummies were found in the Atacama Desert of Peru. And, as in Egypt, bodies there were wrapped in beautiful fabrics and buried with beautiful objects. How did these peoples view the aftelife, I wonder?
I am glad that I have so many questions, and well aware that I don't have unlimited time to get them answered. And, I have to acknowledge that while these questions are interesting (or a least I hope thy are), I probably won't even make an attempt to answer many (most?) of them!
I traveled to Abydos seven years ago, but I don't know that I ever fully realized that the site was sacred to Osiris. I wish that, much earlier in my forays into the Egyptian collection, I'd seen captions to remind me that Osiris was the god of the underworld but also of resurrection, as represented by the sun's daily journey and by the yearly cycle of sowing and harvesting. Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, governed the land of the living. While a pharaoh was alive, he was identified with Horus (as I suggested in my last entry without fully understanding the phenomenon); after he died, he was thought to become Osiris,
Perhaps today, my 70th birthday, is an apt time to be reminded of how much I don't know.
Today's work of art is part of the relief. It shows an image of Sety, perhaps 2 and 1/2 feet high, kneeling on a platform and holding up a tray on which there is a statuette of himself holding a jar containing myrrh that he is offering to a cult symbol of Osiris, which looks like a tall beehive on top of a raised stand. In back of the Osiris symbol is a relief of Horus, his right arm raised in apparent benediction. (I couldn't fit the cult symbol or the Horus image into my picture, unfortunately.)
Two things strike me as odd. First is the idea that Sety is holding a statuette of himself, rather than just offering the myrrh directly.. What does that signify (for surely it has symbolic meaning)? Does Sety perhaps recognize that his own image is to be venerated, and that he himself is godlike? I also wonder why Sety and mini-Sety wear different crowns-- Sety's more like a swim cap, mini-Sety's more like a bishop 's mitre--though both crowns are adorned with snake figures.
The second thing can't fail to strike anyone who has spent any time with Egyptian reliefs, and that's why the sculptors couldn't seem to figure out how to depict right and left hands accurately -- or rather, why they depicted them as they did. The thumbs on the two hands seem to be interchangeable and the positions of the hands impossibly contorted. I try to make these shapes with my own hands, and I can't. I'm sure this was an artistic convention, but what was its purpose?
In this image, it's also hard to "read" Sety's left and right legs. That's because they are in the same level of relief - the left leg is farther back, but it's not more recessed for that reason. It's also because both limbs are covered by a fine pleated garment. While the left thigh is clearly visible, the right one, which is closer to us, is obscured by the garment. Interestingly, the statuette is also kneeling, but there's no mistaking which leg is forward and which back. The statuette wears a much simpler garment that resembles a loincloth, so that helps us see the positions of its legs more clearly.
Before I came to the Egyptian wing today, I went to an excellent gallery talk given by the curator of a new show on golden and other precious objects of the pre-Columbian Americas. The curator reminded me that mummies were found in the Atacama Desert of Peru. And, as in Egypt, bodies there were wrapped in beautiful fabrics and buried with beautiful objects. How did these peoples view the aftelife, I wonder?
I am glad that I have so many questions, and well aware that I don't have unlimited time to get them answered. And, I have to acknowledge that while these questions are interesting (or a least I hope thy are), I probably won't even make an attempt to answer many (most?) of them!
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