HUMAN FIGURINE

HUMAN FIGURINE

The wooden figurine, which was purchased during the public sale of the Amherst collection at London in 1921, consists only of a naked torso surmounted by a head with a pointed beard. The person represented has lost the upper limbs which were once held in place by the tenons at the chest. Of the lower limbs only a part of the right thigh has survived. The function of the quadrangular hole, hollowed out in the abdominal region, is not clear: could it have served to fasten a kilt or to provide a place of attachment for the genitalia? The most characteristic detail is nevertheless the enormous protruding thorax and the dorsal hump due to a pronouced curvature of the vertebral column. The paleopathological exam of the symptoms prove that this person was struck in childhood by vertebral tuberculosis.

Inventory number E.5850

PREDYNASTIC PERIOD >

EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD/THINITE PERIOD

Fr. Jonckheere, Le bossu des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire de Bruxelles, Cd'É 23 (1948) 24-35

R. Watermann, Bilder aus dem Lande des Ptah und Imhotep, Cologne 1958, pl. 14-15

B. Hornemann, Types of Ancient Egyptian Statuary, Munksgaard 1966, II 386

E. Strouhal, Life in Ancient Egypt, Cambridge 1992, 249 fig. 268

J. Fischer, Der Zwerg, der Phallos und der Buckel, Cd'É 73 (1998) 354-355

KMKG - MRAH

http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/record.aspx?id=885