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Egyptian sarcophagus face fragment, New Kingdom, 19th-20th Dynasty, c.1295-1069 BC

Exhibited by Charles Ede

Material Wood

Dimensions Height: 29.2cm

Place of Creation Egypt

Status Vetted

About the Work

Female face from the lid of a wooden sarcophagus, carved with delicate features to show high-arched eyebrows, large almond-shaped eyes and elegant nose. Originally the whole surface would have been painted in bright colours, but now the surface only has small areas of white gesso remaining, with red pigment on the lips, and black delineating the eyes and cosmetic lines. Fixing dowels at the proper right of the mask and under the chin; that on the proper left is missing.

The sarcophagi from the New Kingdom are generally considered to be of greater artistic merit than those from later periods; the present mask exemplifies this.

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Provenance

Bud C. Holland (1922-1994), Chicago, USA
Eugene J. Chesrow Jr. (b.1930), Chicago, USA; acquired 24th April 1980 from the above
Private collection, London, UK; acquired 2018

Literature

For an example of a complete sarcophagus, the type from which this masks derives, compare Christine el Mahdy, Mummies, Myth and Magic in Ancient Egypt (London, 1989), p.93