This plaque is carved with an image of a ram (perhaps Ovis aries), a symbol of fertility and power. The animal is depicted with a goatee, horizontal corkscrew horns, and another recurved horn that encircles his ear. His neck and chest are detailed with thick wool, the texture of which contrasts with the rest of his body. He has a powerful chest, long, slender legs, and a long tail with a puff of wool at the end. His phallus and scrotum are clearly shown.1

Despite its careful detail, the rendering is more mythical than realistic; rams do not have two sets of horns. The horizontal corkscrew horns belong to a type of fleeceless sheep with a long, thin tail that became extinct at the beginning of the New Kingdom (about 1500 BCE), after which time it was no longer shown in reliefs of herdsmen and their flocks.^[1] However, the horizontal horns continued to be a prominent feature of religious iconography, appearing on depictions of the creator gods Khnum and Re, the gods Herishef and Ba-neb-djed (the ram god of the city of Mendes in the Delta), and the ram-headed depiction of the evening sun often shown in representations of the underworld. The corkscrew horns are a prominent element of the atef crown worn by the king, by Osiris, and by other gods (see cats. 25, 28–29, 31, 36).2

The curved horns of a real ram also have mythical associations, especially with the god Amun who was often depicted as a ram. From Dynasty 18 onward, the king may be shown wearing this horn encircling his ear, an indication of his association with Amun. Temples dedicated to Amun usually have an avenue of criosphinxes (ram-headed lions) that represent the god. Alexander the Great adopted the curved horn to indicate that he continued to rule in the tradition of the native Egyptian pharaohs, and that he too was under the protection of Amun (see fig. 1).3

Plaques with animals are part of a corpus of small-scale reliefs that represent a narrow range of creatures, including rams, birds (quails [see cat. 14], swallows, owls and vultures [see cat. 16]), lions (see cat. 16), bulls, and (rarely) jackals. This plaque and cat. 14 have areas—the base lines for the ram and the quail, and the ledges in the upper left—that retain the original thickness of the plaques, probably to show how much stone had been removed in the sculpting process. Both pieces attest to the artisans’ great skill in the carving and in the smoothing of backgrounds, which bear no trace of scratches or gouges made by their tools. Both plaques were carved from very fine-quality limestone without grain or inclusions. Like most relief plaques depicting animals, the ram and the quail face to the right, the same direction as the default for the hieroglyphs to which these images are related.4

Raised edges are present at the bottom and the upper left and right corners of the plaque. The edge area at the upper left is divided into three segments, two of which are about the same length as the segments at the bottom, suggesting that they were an aid to measurement.^[2] The reverse of the plaque bears eight scored, vertical lines that divide it into nine segments (fig. 2).
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Function of Relief Plaques Depicting Animals

There is extensive discussion about whether relief plaques were sculptors’ studies or votive plaques that were deposited in temples. In regard to the plaques with carvings of animals and birds, the argument is stronger for their role as votives because many of the creatures shown can be associated with a specific deity and, unlike the plaques that show human figures, the creatures are usually finished and have considerable detail in their rendering.^[3] This is especially true of this plaque of a ram, which may have served as an alternative to a more expensive bronze figure that could be dedicated in a temple or animal necropolis associated with Amun.^[4]6

Acquisition

This plaque was among the objects, along with the plaque in cat. 12 and the statue fragment in cat. 17, purchased in 1919 by James Henry Breasted from the dealer Panayotis Kyticas in Cairo for the Art Institute, at the time when the museum began to focus its Egyptian collection on objects that illustrated the skill of ancient artists. Breasted wrote to Charles Hutchinson that this plaque was “very beautifully executed, with much refinement and detail,” and that it, and the plaque in cat. 14, were “exquisite,” and “very fine because they are permanent model studies on which the artist spent much time.”^[5]7

For more on relief plaques, see About Relief Plaques.8

Provenance

Panayotis Kyticas, Cairo; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago through James Henry Breasted as agent, 1919. 9

Publication History

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 44 (ill), 45–46.10

Leon Marfoe, A Guide to the Oriental Institute Museum (Chicago: Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, 1982), 35 (ill.).11

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.
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