About Copper Alloy Statuettes

Cult Use

Countless numbers of statuettes cast of copper alloy were made in Egypt from about 1000 BCE until well into the Roman era. They most commonly depict deities, but statuettes of kings, queens, and priests are also well attested. They range in height from just a few centimeters to about thirty, although a few much larger examples, measuring a meter or so tall, are known.1

Copper alloy statuettes are very common because of their role in the divine cult. Egyptian religion was highly transactional—a worshipper left an offering for the deity to persuade him or her to grant health, life, or other favors. Metal statuettes deposited in shrines or temple enclosures were among the most prestigious offerings that an elite Egyptian could dedicate. Some of these offerings have brief, formulaic inscriptions (see cats. 26, 29, 30), such as “May [the god] give life,” that refer to the hope that the donation would evoke divine favor. Larger, hollow statuettes, or those with integral bases that created interior space, could be used as containers for mummies or bones of small creatures—especially birds, shrews, and ichneumons (mongooses)—that were sacred to specific gods (see cat. 32).2

Depositing statuettes at shrines was a very common practice, as indicated by the few excavated groups of bronzes found in Egypt. For example, in the 1995–96 archaeological season at the Sacred Animal Necropolis at Saqqara, over six hundred were recovered, and the cache at ‘Ayn Manâwir in Kharga Oasis, which was discovered in 1993, contained four hundred bronzes, most of which were statuettes of gods.^[1] The largest of these finds—a staggering seventeen thousand bronzes—was discovered at Karnak in 1903.^[2] Because the statuettes represented gods and humans, they were buried as acts of respect and piety, rather than being melted down and recast as was common in the classical world.3

Manufacture

Early cast-metal statuettes from Egypt were made of copper mixed with naturally occurring metals, including silver, gold, and lead. True bronze (an alloy of copper and arsenic, or copper and tin) did not appear until the late Middle Kingdom, and copper-lead alloys appeared generally in the Third Intermediate Period.^[3] Because the metal was so valuable and the ore was recovered by state-sponsored expeditions, the foundries were in temple or palace workshops where the raw material could be closely tracked.4

The earliest cast objects in Egypt are copper tools from the Early Dynastic Period (about 2900 BCE). The creation of figurative objects may have begun at about the same time, as indicated by a cast copper amulet of an ape, also dated to the Early Dynastic Period.^[4] The earliest cast statuettes were made during the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period.^[5] Solid-cast statuettes of kings, women with children, and deities appear in the Middle Kingdom. A few hollow-cast statuettes belong to the same period.^[6] By Dynasty 18 (about 1500 BCE), copper alloy casting became more common, and by the first millennium BCE, statuettes were made in huge numbers in a wide variety of forms and sizes. Bronzes could be embellished with gold, silver, or stone inlays, and a few have details picked out in pigment. Most metal statues from Egypt are cast, rather than hammered over a core.5

Many statuettes were cast in an open mold, but far more frequently they were made using the direct lost-wax process (fig. 1). The cast statuette could be solid or hollow, the latter requiring less metal. The process began with a wax model. Wax models for statuettes that were to be hollow were formed over a casting core made of clay or sand and organic material.^[7]A wax sprue, or funnel, through which the molten metal would be introduced, was added to the statuette, as were wax vents that would allow air in the mold to escape, enabling the metal to reach all parts of the cavity. The wax statuette was encased in a clay coating (referred to as an “investment”) that was heated in a kiln, causing the wax to run out. Small metal rods called core supports connected the core to the investment, ensuring that the core would stay in position after the wax escaped. The molten metal was then poured in, replacing the area formerly occupied by the wax. Once cooled, the investment was broken away and the resulting statuette was touched up to remove the remains of the core supports, funnel, and any vents. Many examples were cast in pieces—some hollow, some solid—that were then joined together with solder or with mortise and tenon joints, the latter method being similar to those used for making wood statues consisting of multiple elements. Each statuette was a unique work because the wax model and the mold were destroyed in the casting process. Statuettes more than a few centimeters tall were made individually, but smaller ones could be cast in multiples if a single investment was fitted with a system of channels that fed the molten metal to a cavity for each figurine. One of the more complicated examples of these investments would have produced thirty-four tiny Osiris figurines in a single casting process.^[8] Plaster or stone molds from the Late Period and Greco-Roman Period that were once thought to be used to cast metal are now believed to have been used to create wax models, resulting in near-duplicate castings.^[9] 6

Scenes of metal casting are shown in the tomb of Rekhmire at Thebes (about 1427 BCE), including a sequence of workmen preparing the fire, using bellows to raise its temperature, manipulating crucibles of molten metal with sticks, and pouring it into a row of funnels to cast a large, metal door (fig. 2). It is thought that this technique of metal casting was imported from Mesopotamia, although the method of transmission is unknown.^[10] According to the Greek literary tradition, the knowledge of bronze (or copper alloy) casting traveled from Egypt to Greece with the sixth-century BCE travelers Rhoikos and Theodoros of Samos, although small-scale, lost-wax bronzes from Greece are known from the tenth century BCE.^[11] 7

Few copper alloy statuettes (other than those from caches; see “Cult Use” above) have a provenance. Most appeared on the art market after being sold to art dealers by farmers who found them while digging in the nitrogen-rich mud-brick enclosure walls of temples and cemeteries that they used as fertilizer.^[12] 8