Description Mummy mask
Acacia or cedar wood, carved and polychrome painted, on the back three holes for holding pegs for
Attachment to the mummy cover, a small, moderately worn area at the vertex
Height appx. 250 mm, width appx. 200 mm, depth appx. 100 mm
Probably late New Kingdom around 1100-1000 BC
Provenance: Selim Dere, Fortuna Fine Arts, New York, 1996, private collection Austria
The extraordinarily good state of preservation and the still freshly coloured polychrome painting of the head part of a lady’s mummy cover are very remarkable. Her expressive, but undoubtedly idealized face shows big eyes with long, blue painted eyebrows and the same cosmetic lines as they were used for the New Kingdom are characteristic, straight nose and full lips over narrow chin. The wig is held together by a wide hair band decorated with multicoloured dots and stripes, above is a diadem of floral motifs with a lotus flower in the middle. Since no inscription can be proven, nothing more can be said about the identity of the sitter (from analogies with inscribed examples it will probably be a lady) or the place of manufacture of the sarcophagus, but the manner of execution clearly speaks for its origin in Thebes between later XIX and XXI dynasties. An in every respect convincing comparison piece with similar features, certainly from the same period, had been offered at Sotheby’s in New York on June 8, 1994 as lot 54.
Expert: Dr. Helmut Satzinger, Professor of Egyptology, University of Vienna
Former Keeper of ‘The Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection’, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Literature: Katalog des ?gyptischen Museums in Kairo, Mainz 1986, No. 218
“?gypten, Augenblicke der Ewigkeit”, Basel/Genf 1997, p. 198/9, No. 130
W. Seipel hrsg., “G?tter, Gr?ber u. d. Kunst”, Ausstellungs-Kat. Linz 1989, p. 140, No. 105
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