Middle Kingdom Statuary

Today we had a visit from a PhD student from Brussels, Simon Connor who is researching Middle Kingdom statuary. Its always useful when researchers come to see the collection as we learn a lot. For example I didn't know that sometimes steatite was heated up to make it look like more expensive stone such as granite. Sometimes modern forgers do the same.

Here are a few of the pieces that Siman looked at:

W301. Simon pointed out that the big belly on this piece is typical of the 13th Dynasty. The inscription is the standard offering formula and mentions a person called Minaa. The piece is made of granodiorite so is an elite piece.

W5291. The piece on the left is also of granodiorite and thus an elite piece. If you view the statue sideways on you would see that the man is kneeling, as is common with other statues showing figures holding vessels. No exact parallel to this is however known. A little more can be found out about it here.

Finally the figures on the left (W847) are steatite. As this is a soft stone it would have been used for the 'not so elite'. You can find out a bit more about this here.