This slab of finely carved limestone represents a man with a thin plaited curved false beard with a wispy, unbraided end. This style of curved false beard was worn by gods, although nothing more can be established about his precise identity. He wears a tripartite wig detailed with incised lines. The tresses on the front of his shoulder end in a single horizontal bar. The artist has carved the hair above the shoulder as to suggest its significant volume. The god has a puffy face, a soft chin, and a thick, fleshy neck. His eye is small and almond shaped and his pupil is not indicated. The cosmetic line delineating his eye extends to the tab of his wig in front of his ear. His lips are curled upward into a vague smile. His nose is small and tilted up at the tip, and his nostril is deeply drilled. His chest is covered by the sketchy outline of a broad collar, bordered at the top by round beads and the bottom by teardrop-shaped beads. The features of the collar are more detailed on the left shoulder than on the right. Although the junction of his underarm and torso are indicated, his arms have little suggestion of musculature or anatomy. His torso narrows dramatically toward his slender waist. There does not seem to be any indication of the expected nipples on his breast. Overall, his facial features and body give the general impression of femininity, or at least androgyny. This is one of the few examples of such a plaque where the subject faces left—rightward-facing images are the norm.1

For more on relief plaques, see About Relief Plaques.2

Provenance

Panayotis Kyticas, Cairo; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago through James Henry Breasted as agent, 1919.3

Publication History

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 44 (ill.), 45.4

Karen B. Alexander, “From Plaster to Stone: Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” in Recasting the Past: Collecting and Presenting Antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago, by Karen Manchester (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2012), 28.5

Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ed., When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, with contributions by Mary C. Greuel et al., exh. cat. (New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 2014), 22, fig. 1-5; 97, no. 74.
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