This statue demonstrates the permanence of Egyptian artistic styles. The man’s kilt, his broad collar, and even the style of his wig deliberately copy earlier styles, which harken back more than 2000 years. Wesirnakht is portrayed kneeling before a god with his arms on his thighs in a pose of reverence.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
On back pillar: “The one revered by Osiris Resy-Wedja in Buto, the Foremost of Pe, Great One of the Double Uraeus Who is in the Sky, Priest of Horus Who-is-on-His-Papyrus, Wesirnakht, son of the Foremost One of Pe, the One who Recovers the Five [?], Horhotep, born of the Lady of the House Tadiese”
Dimensions
16.5 × 6.6 × 8.5 cm (6 1/4 × 2 5/8 × 3 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
W. Moses Willner Fund
Reference Number
1910.243
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Art Institute of Chicago, Thirty-Second Annual Report: June 1, 1910–June 1, 1911 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1911), 19, 62.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1923), 58, 59 (ill.).
Bernard V. Bothmer, Herman De Meulenaere, and Hans Wolfgang Müller, comps., Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period, 700 B.C. to A.D. 100, exh. cat. (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, 1960), 114–16, cat. 91, pl. 85, figs. 226–27.
Edna R. Russmann, “The Statue of Amenemope-em-hat,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 8 (1973): 45, fig. 8.
Pascal Vernus, Athribis: Textes et documents relatifs à la géographie, aux cultes, et à l’histoire d’une ville du Delta égyptien à l’époque pharaonique (Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire, 1978), 191-92, no. 158 (as Oriental Institute 10243).
Karen B. Alexander, “From Plaster to Stone: Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” in Karen Manchester, Recasting the Past: Collecting and Presenting Antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 38.
The Art Institute of Chicago, acquired in 1910.
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