A wooden estate figure carries offerings on her head: the tomb’s staff, walking forever toward a hungry ka.
Mercury 91 is not affiliated with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Images and object data shown here are public-domain Open Access (CC0) records from The Met collection. Citations are given so you can visit each work on the museum site.
Servant statues and offering bearers make elite tombs honest. Someone had to carry the beer and the birds. This woman is that labor, carved with the dignity of a necessary planet in a household solar system.
Her burden is the point of the pose. Balance is skill. The afterlife economy runs on her neck.
Middle Kingdom wood sculpture can feel more immediate than stone kings. Paint still sits in the grain. You are closer to a person who worked.
In the colonnade she is a counterweight to Hatshepsut. One woman is king. One woman is staff. Egyptian art needs both on the same path or the offerings never arrive.
Citation
Estate Figure. ca. 1981–1975 B.C.. Wood, gesso, paint. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 20.3.7. Rogers Fund and Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1920
Public-domain Open Access (CC0) photograph. Dimensions: H. 112 cm (44 1/8 in.); W. 17 cm (6 11/16 in.); D. 46.7 cm (18 3/8 in.)
