White Ancient Egypt, Part 2

These images absconded from http://www.mfa.org/

Front side panel of outer coffin of Djehutynakht
Egyptian Middle Kingdom, late Dynasty 11 – early Dynasty
2010–1961 B.C.
Cedar
Height x width: 115 x 263 cm (45 1/4 x 103 9/16 in.)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Harvard University—Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition
20.1822

© 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Front side panel of outer coffin of Djehutynakht
Egyptian Middle Kingdom, late Dynasty 11 – early Dynasty
2010–1961 B.C.
Cedar
Height x width: 115 x 263 cm (45 1/4 x 103 9/16 in.)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Harvard University—Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition
20.1822

© 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Statue of Wepwawetemhat
Egyptian, First Intermediate to Middle Kingdom, probably l, 2140–1991 B.C.
Findspot: Asyut, Egypt
Length x width x height: 71.1 x 23.1 x 112 cm (28 x 9 1/8 x 44 1/8 in.)
Wood
Classification: Sculpture
Accession number: 04.1780

Emily Esther Sears Fund

This masterful wooden statue, made for the tomb of a minor official who lived at the end of the First Intermediate Period or early in the Middle Kingdom, represents the culmination of the style that emerged in the late Old Kingdom. A brief text on the base identifies the figure as "the venerated one, Wepwawetemhat," who is shown as a slender, idealized young man striding forward with his left foot - the traditional pose for a sculpture of an Egyptian dignitary. The head, torso, and legs were carved from a single piece of wood, while the arms and the base of the figure were made separately. The entire statue was then coated with gesso and brightly painted and the eyes were inlaid with black and white stones. The features of the face, including the slightly arched eyebrows and well-preserved eyes, impart a youthful intensity and energy.

Pair statue of Ptahkhenuwy and his wife
Egyptian, Old Kingdom, Dynasty 5, 2465–2323 B.C.
Findspot: Giza, Egypt
Height: 70.14 cm (27 5/8 in.)
Painted limestone
Classification: Sculpture
Accession number: 06.1876
Harvard University—Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition

Private sculpture of the Old Kingdom copied royal sculpture: the poses, youthful body forms, and the wife's embrace of the husband in this private sculpture is the same as those of King Menkaura and his queen in their dyad. The man here is identified by an inscription painted on the base in black paint as Ptahkhenwy, supervisor of palace retainers. He stands with his left leg forward in the traditional male pose, and his partner, her name no longer legible in the inscription and identified now only as "his wife whom he loved," stands beside him with both feet together.

[This one is important: it shows how blacks were portrayed in Egyptian art - there is no way that any of these other artifacts portray blacks! WRF]

Tile with Nubian chief
Egyptian, New Kingdom, Dynasty 20, reign of Ramesses III, 1184–1153 B.C.
Findspot: Thebes, Egypt
Height x width: 25 x 6 cm (9 13/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
Polychrome faience
Classification: Architectural elements
Accession number: 03.1570
Emily Esther Sears Fund

Ramesses III was the last great military pharaoh of the New Kingdom. In his fifth year on the throne he defeated the Libyans and brought them back to Egypt as slaves. In his eighth year he faced an even greater threat: a confederation of displaced eastern Mediterranean tribes on the move, including Greeks and Philistines, known collectively as the Sea Peoples. Fresh from their victory over the Hittites, the Sea Peoples attempted to invade Egypt with the intention of settling there. Ramesses roundly defeated them both by sea and by land, recording his victories on the walls of his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, "United with Eternity," which remains the best-preserved royal mortuary temple on the west bank of Thebes.

As the king was occasionally obliged for ritual and other reasons to stay at the mortuary temple, suitable quarters had to be arranged for him there, and so the temple complex included a ceremonial palace of mud brick luxuriously decorated with multicolored faience tiles and inlays. The two main entrance doorways showed the king as a sphinx trampling his enemies. Rows of bound foreigners on the lower jambs continued the theme of pharaoh's victory. The artists reproduced the foreigners' ethnic costumes and physiognomies according to convention.

Shown here in his finery, bound and helpless, is a Nubian chief, from one end of the Egyptian empire. The Nubian has orange hair and a large loop-earring. Other tiles featured Syrians, Libyans, Amorites, Philistines, Bedouins, and Sea Peoples. Ironically it was the descendants of the militant Libyan tribes settled in the Delta by Ramesses III who in the Third Intermediate Period, in Dynasty 22, ascended pharaoh's throne.

Inner coffin of Nesmutaatneru
Egyptian, Late Period, Dynasty 25, 760–660 B.C.

Findspot: Thebes, Deir el-Bahari, Egypt
Length: 169 cm (66 9/16 in.)
Plastered linen over wood

Classification: Tomb equipment

On view in the: Egyptian Funerary Arts Gallery

Beautifully preserved coffin of the mummy of Nesmutaatneru (see 95.1407a). The coffin, of a type that replaced cartonnage cases, takes the form of a mummified body standing on a pedestal and supported in back by a djed-pillar, the hieroglyph for stability and emblem of Osiris. The decoration is brightly painted on a layer of plastered linen. Nesmutaatneru wears a vulture headdress over a long wig, an elaborate broad collar, and a ram-headed pectoral. The body is divided by bands of hieroglyphic text into compartments containing images of deities associated with the afterlife. In the central scene, the deceased lies on a bier surrounded by Isis and Nephthys and surmounted by a winged scarab representing Khepri.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Egyptian, Late Period, Dynasty 25, 760–660 B.C.

Findspot: Thebes, Deir el-Bahari, Egypt
Length: 186 cm (73 1/4 in.)
Wood

Classification: Tomb equipment

On view in the: Egyptian Funerary Arts Gallery

Large anthropoid coffin of wood, simply decorated but beautifully worked. Most of the lid is plain, but the face, wig and broad collar are plastered and brightly painted. On the chest is a winged sun disk, a vignette showing the deceased before Ra-Horakhty, and two columns of inscription.

The first column of hieroglyphs reads:
Recitation, Osiris, the Lady of the house Ns-mwt-Aa-nrwt, the daughter of the beloved of god... Southern Hieliopolis, TA-n-WAst. Her mother is the Lady of the house Ns-nsw-pA-Xrd, the vendicated, the revered.

The second column reads:
Recitation, Hail to you, xnty-imnty, Osiris who is in the midst of Abydos. May you give abundance of offerings to the Beautiful West so that I might recive from the Lords of the Necropolis, who said to me ...

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston