This votive plaque or artist’s trial piece is carved on both sides and inscribed with a Demotic (the late form of the Egyptian script) text. The initial use of the plaque was the side with the lion. The plaque was broken in antiquity and only the hindquarters of the animal are preserved. The lion stands on a broad baseline (or edge) that indicates the original thickness of the plaque. The modeling is very skillful, with the raised relief of the lion’s body emphasizing the soft curves of his musculature, the tendons of his legs, and the line of his loose belly flesh. His tail, which rests against his back leg and bends upward, is detailed with a crease at its base and a pompom of fur at its end. At some unknown time, a human foot was roughly carved above the back of the lion and a rectangular shape was scratched into the base, below the animal’s hind right paw.1

A grid was drawn over the lion and its background. Grids were a fundamental part of the artists’ process. Whether traced on a block of stone destined to become a statue in the round or a relief on a wall, grids were employed to ensure the uniformity of figural proportions. When a grid was superimposed over a finished surface, as on this plaque, it likely served as either an aid for copying the subject matter or an instructional guide for apprentices studying the proportions used by their master. Unlike grids used for the human body that were initially eighteen squares high but were modified to twenty-one squares high in Dynasty 25 (about 747 BCE), this example does not appear to have standard number of grid squares for any specific animal.^[1] For example, grids for other lions are between seven and eight squares high, while the Chicago example is approximately eleven squares high.^[2]2

Four birds were carved on the reverse of this plaque. In the upper register are two that resemble lappet-faced vultures (Aegypius tracheliotus), and in the lower register are two owls, probably barn owls (Tyto alba alba).^[3] Both types of bird are among the most common hieroglyphs, with the vulture having the phonetic value “aleph” and the owl the phonetic value “m.” The birds on the right are fully carved, with good detail in their feathers and in the scales on the legs of the vulture. In contrast, those on the left are roughly worked out and lack fine detail. In comparison with the vulture on the right, the head and lappet of the vulture on the left are poorly proportioned. The lappet has a much larger eye and the folds of its skin are positioned differently on its head. The two owls also show different levels of skill and completion. The mask of the owl on the left is poorly executed, with the eyes slanting downward, and it lacks a left foot; if the left foot had been rendered, it would have extended beyond the rectangular base. The lower right section of the plaque is lost, making it impossible to compare other details of the owls. Artists generally worked from right to left, so if this had been an instructional piece, presumably the birds on the right were made by the master and the ones on the left by the apprentice. Pairs of birds are a common theme of these plaques.3

This plaque was reused several times. The lion was carved first. After the plaque was broken leaving only the hindquarters of the lion, the fragment was flipped over and turned upside down for the birds. The birds are neatly centered on the reverse, confirming that they were added after the plaque was broken. At some uncertain time, but probably after the birds were carved, the plaque was flipped over and turned upside down again and the Demotic inscription was added to the side with the lion.4

Demotic Inscription

A number of these relief plaques bear inscriptions, nearly all of them in Demotic. The texts, when they have been translated, are not related to the subject matter of the carving, which is especially clear here since the text is oriented 180 degrees from the carving (fig. 1). The notations are usually lists of names associated with temple invoices and distribution lists, although a few records of dedications are known.^[4]5

For example, the text on the Chicago plaque contains a heading for the account of a temple storehouse.^[5] Thirteen lines in the right column consist of names of individuals, many followed by the name of their fathers. One name is accompanied by a priestly title, lesonis. Several names occur multiple times. Some lines document a distribution from the temple expressed in terms of kite, a measure, in this case of silver. Five additional lines, again including personal names, appear in the left column.6

The use of these beautifully carved plaques as notepads seems incongruous, considering that such notations could be made on broken pottery or an ostracon (a flake of unworked limestone used for informal documentation). As on other such inscribed plaques, the scribe who inscribed the Chicago plaque deliberately avoided writing over the carved relief, which may be more a function of the difficulty posed by the irregular surface of the plaque rather than any respect he might have felt for the imagery. Since most of these texts center on temple business, it is likely that the sculptors’ ateliers, where the scribes would have procured such materials, were located in or near a temple.^[6]7

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

Nicolas George Tano (1866–1924), 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), 45 (ill.), 46.10

Art Institute of Chicago, A Brief Illustrated Guide to the Collections (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1935), 9 (ill.).11

Nadja Tomoum, The Sculptors’ Models of the Late and Ptolemaic Periods: A Study of the Type and Function of a Group of Ancient Egyptian Artefacts (Cairo: National Center for Documentation of Cultural and National Heritage; Supreme Council of Antiquities, 2005), 89n60, 94n83, 95–96, 114n5, 114n8, 115n20.12

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), 28.13

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), 90, no. 11.14

Sven P. Vleeming, Demotic Graffiti and Other Short Texts Gathered from Many Publications (Short Texts III 1201–2350), Studia Demotica 12 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 383, no. 2097.
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