169
168
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femAle fiGure
Egypt, Hierakonpolis (Kôm el-Akhmar)
or Ma’amariya (Northern Egypt) (?)
Naqada II period (ca. 3450–3300 BC)
Painted baked clay, H. 18 cm
Musée d’Archéologie
nationale
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, inv. 77.740.C
(Jacques or Henri de Morgan
Collection)
Bibliography:
Ucko 1968, p. 105,
no. 83;
Archéologie comparée
1982,
p. 129.
This figurine belongs to one of the
“canonical” types of predynastic
Egypt, which currently comprises
almost 250 definitively identified
examples. Made of three fragments
re-joined in ancient times, it has
a characteristic head with a bird-
like profile. The slightly misaligned
breasts and the curvature are quite
accentuated
while the legs are joined
to form a sort of pivot, which could
have served originally to keep the
statuette stable, stuck in the ground
or attached to some kind of support.
This lower part of the body is poorly-
defined and bears traces of a white
engobe which some scholars believe
is meant to suggest a “skirt”. The
orientation of the fracture line of the
arms, broken under the shoulder in
ancient times, indicates that the arms
originally
extended along the torso
or were slightly bent at the height
of the stomach or genitals, as some
examples published by W.M.F. Petrie
in 1920. On the other hand, it can be
ruled out that the arms were raised
above the head, as in the renowned
type of the “dancing figurine”.
Many questions arise when studying
this statuette,
one of the prize objects
in the Morgan Collection at the Musée
d’Archéologie nationale (MAN).
The massive quantity of archaeological
material donated to the museum by
the brothers Henri and Jacques de
Morgan in 1909–1910, the outbreak
of WWI and, in 1927, the sudden
death of Henri Hubert, director of
the comparative archaeology room,
resulted in a substantial delay and
a vague entry on the figurine in
the museum inventory. In fact, only
in 1939 were the “fragments of
four glossy
grey and red terracotta
female statuettes” included in a
lot of objects whose provenance
was specifically identified as Kôm
el-Akhmar (Hierakonpolis). After
careful investigation, it became clear
that presently no other statuette
or fragment in the collection can
be attributed to other predynastic
Egyptian sites.
Therefore, it seems that this piece
does belong to that lot, although
there is
still some room for doubt
given the lack of precision in the
inventory description. The delayed
registration makes it impossible to
even know whether the figurine comes
from Jacques or Henri de Morgan’s
collection. The two archaeologists
explored the region of Hierakonpolis
several decades apart. Unfortunately,
Jacques makes no mention of any
discovery of this type in his 1896 work,
and a comparison of the information in
Henri’s excavation notes, conserved at
the MAN,
with the articles published
at the end of the two explorations
carried out on behalf of the Brooklyn
Museum in 1906–1907 and 1907–1908
provides no definite data on the exact
provenance of the figurine.
It is worth pointing out, however, that
the notes report rather cryptically
that the terrain of the zone of the
kjökkenmöddings
(habitat) of Kôm
el Akhmar was in complete disarray,
with an “enormous mass of rubble,
terracotta statuettes of animals,
cows . . . and vessels”, among which
may have
been discovered various
fragments of our figurine. While it
has been associated in some cases
with figurines found in funerary
contexts in Ma’amariya during the
same explorations, nonetheless there
are several notable differences: the
arms are positioned differently; the
impasto is less fine and has stains due
to defective firing, and the overall
appearance is cruder. P. Ucko has
suggested
that a chemical analysis
of the white engobe in the lower
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