A Rare Mechanical Figure from Ancient Egypt
2015; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 50; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1086/685672
ISSN2169-3072
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeological Research and Protection
ResumoPrevious articleNext article FreeA Rare Mechanical Figure from Ancient EgyptNicholas ReevesNicholas ReevesUniversity of Arizona Egyptian Expedition Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHe saw her charming, but he saw not halfThe charms her down-cast modesty conceal’d.1—James Thomson, 1700–1748One of the more curious pieces to be found among the extensive Egyptian holdings of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a small and delicately carved statuette in wood representing a woman wearing nothing more than a heavy, shoulder-length wig (fig. 1). Though the figure is unclothed, propriety is maintained by the surviving right hand, which is strategically placed to cover the sex, while a missing left arm appears originally to have shielded the breasts. The modesty is nonetheless feigned, for at the pull of a string the arms are designed to rise and display the subject’s feminine charms in full. This is no ordinary Egyptian statuette, but a “protoautomaton,” an object type encountered occasionally in the archaeological record of the Nile Valley, though seldom at this level of mechanical sophistication and never with such overtly erotic overtones.2 First seen by Metropolitan Museum curator William C. Hayes at the gallery of New York art dealer Michel Abemayor (1912?–1975) in January 1958, the object sparked immediate interest.3 The outcome of a preliminary examination by the Museum’s then Technical Laboratory was positive: though the piece displayed what appeared to be a layer of “modern varnish,” beneath lay a “carved wood surface” that was evidently “of very ancient date.”4 For Hayes this determination provided sufficient grounds to proceed with the object’s acquisition as “a fine example of small figure sculpture of the best period of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom”—that is to say, the Twelfth Dynasty (ca. 1981–1802 b.c.).5fig. 1. Female figure with internal mechanism. Egyptian, ca. 945–664 b.c. Wood, H. 4⅝ in. (11.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Funds from Various Donors, 1958 (58.36a–c)Within months of the statuette’s first public display, however, this Middle Kingdom dating was quietly dropped as a stylistic improbability, and the figure was reassigned to the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1550–1295 b.c.).6 Sometime after that—presumably because an Eighteenth Dynasty attribution was itself unconvincing—the pendulum swung back, and a Twelfth Dynasty date was mooted once again.7 By 1990, the now problematic “toy” had been withdrawn from view, consigned as a possible forgery to the study room of the Department of Egyptian Art.8 And there for decades—since it is always easier to condemn than to rehabilitate—the piece would languish, unpublished and essentially unknown.In 2010, the writer’s attention was drawn to this statuette during a trawl through the Museum’s Egyptian study reserves, prompting a detailed reexamination. The results of this review, detailed in part 1 of the present study, indicate forcefully that the figure is indeed the ancient work Hayes originally perceived it to be, and not the modern piece of gentlemen’s whimsy that others subsequently may have come to suspect.9 The questions raised by this remarkable little object are several, however, and these are addressed in part 2. Who is the intended subject? Why was the figure mechanized, and what was its intended use? Is the piece indeed Egyptian, or merely egyptianizing? The answers ventured point to the exceptional importance of the Metropolitan’s statuette not only as a rare specimen of ancient mechanics but also as key to a broader understanding of identity and role within Egypt’s minor arts during the first millennium b.c.Part I: Establishing Authenticity and DatePhysical DescriptionThe sculpture stands just 4⅝ inches tall and is carved from a light, close-grained wood. The female subject’s feet are placed side by side on an integral base, and she wears a heavy, striated wig that extends below the shoulders. The figure displays what by ancient Egyptian standards is a relatively full body, that of an adult rather than a young girl, with breasts and genital area summarily defined, the usual dimples above the buttocks, and heavy thighs—a piece modeled both competently and tastefully, albeit in the somewhat bland style that has for years frustrated attempts to assign to the work a precise date.As already observed, the statuette’s physical stance is a curious one: rather than adopting the usual pose of an ancient Egyptian female figure, with arms held straight down on either side, the subject bends a surviving right arm to conceal her sex behind a strategically placed open hand. Stranger still, this arm was designed to lift and expose in tandem with its lost companion (fig. 2).fig. 2. Diagram of fig. 1, showing movement of the surviving right armThe motion depended on a true mechanism—a rotating axle introduced into the torso through a square-cut hole in the right shoulder (fig. 3). This aperture gives access to a large, neatly cut void and a small, drilled exit hole. One end of the axle is fashioned as a tenon, and onto this tenon the figure’s right arm is firmly mortised. The axle’s distal end preserves the remains of a similar tenon—now little more than a rounded stump—that originally carried the left arm. The positioning of this missing arm, and the likely reason for its loss, are considered below.fig. 3. Detail of right side of statuette shown in fig. 1, showing square-cut aperture to receive the axleThe axle (fig. 4) was hand-carved from a single piece of dark hardwood, with its middle section fashioned in the form of a spool around which a string could be wound. This string, now missing, was tied in place through a single, transverse piercing in the center. How the axle was made to turn is revealed by an X-radiograph (fig. 5): this shows the precise form of the axle cavity and the string’s course through a narrow channel running from the floor of the cavity, down the statuette’s left leg, and out through the base (fig. 6).10 The mode of operation was simple: grasp the figure by the waist, pull the string to turn the axle, and watch as the arms miraculously rise.11fig. 4. Right arm and axle removed from statuette shown in fig. 1fig. 5. X-radiograph of statuette seen in fig. 1, showing the hollowed-out upper torso and channel drilled through the left leg for the operating stringfig. 6. Diagram of fig. 1, showing the operating mechanism (axle in beige, string in pink)Sampling and TestingSince the exceptional character of this object has provoked considerable skepticism over the years, the question of authenticity was revisited in collaboration with the Museum’s Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation. The detailed scientific research upon which the following paragraphs are based was coordinated by conservator Ann Heywood and carried out between 2011 and 2013.Visual examination of the figure’s three surviving elements, together with material sampling of the torso, indicated that both the body and the surviving arm were very probably carved from boxwood (Buxus sp.), the material of choice, experience would suggest, for the production in ancient Egypt of high-quality, smallscale sculptures of this type.12 A macroscopic examination of the axle suggests that it was carved either from a species of ebony (Diospyros L.) or from African blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon).13 Most interesting of all, radiocarbon (C-14) testing revealed that the tree from which the body was sculpted was felled sometime between 910 b.c. and 800 b.c.—that is, during the Twenty-Second Dynasty (945–712 b.c.).14While the materials from which the figure was constructed were appropriate for an ancient work of art, still the possibility remained that old wood might have been employed to carve a completely modern figure and mechanism. Further examination was therefore necessary.As the statuette had received little substantive treatment since its arrival at the Museum, a detailed investigation could be undertaken of the underlying surface.15 The modern coating (“varnish”) first noted in 1958 was removed, greatly reducing the darkened, saturated appearance of the wood. The earlier surfaces of the work’s three components were then examined using X-radiograph fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF).16 The results were instructive. Trace elements of calcium, iron, and chlorides on the body, arm, and axle provided a likely indication of age, while traces of copper on the body and arm possibly reflected the use of copper tools. A sample of the wig’s pigment fill (now mostly lost) was examined by polarizing light microscopy and identified as a carbon black mixed with a small amount of Egyptian blue.17 Elevated levels of copper were also noted. While the trace of Egyptian blue may represent nothing more than an impurity, its presence speaks well for the antiquity of the figure. If the coloring was applied deliberately, then its presence could point to an identification of the subject: with its hair mimicking the appearance of lapis lazuli, clearly the figure would have been intended to be understood as the image of a goddess.18Dating and Likely OriginThe carbon-14 test results provide a reliable point of departure for determining the figure’s date of production. Since the tree that supplied the statuette’s wood was felled no earlier than the late tenth or ninth century b.c., previous attributions to the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties may obviously be ruled out. If the wood was carved soon after the tree was felled, the work may be assigned to the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1070–712 b.c.), a dating that in fact correlates with the figure’s heavyset femininity. That the statuette appears to have been laid out according to a proportional grid19 strengthens the presumptions of antiquity and local Egyptian workmanship—or at least of a work designed and realized by a native craftsman rather than by a foreign (Mediterranean) artisan following a vague, egyptianizing aesthetic.20Stylistic AnomaliesWhile a proposed dating within the first half of the first millennium b.c. seems consistent with both the scientifically established age of the wood and the figure’s overall style and proportions, a number of idiosyncratic features displayed by the piece warrant consideration and comment.The first peculiarity of note is the modeling of the figure’s wig. Although it is of the same tripartite pattern as wigs traditionally worn by Egyptian divinities, the hair is arranged not with the usual central parting but in a decidedly odd manner—with a T-shaped parting that divides side to side and also backward (fig. 7a). A second curious feature is the manner in which the hair falls over each shoulder, leaving a large and deep triangular void through to the level of the neck (see fig. 1). As anomalous as these details at first sight appear, however, neither one is unique: an extensive search through the literature reveals sound Egyptian parallels for both (figs. 7b,c).21fig. 7a. Detail of statuette shown in fig. 1, showing the parting of the wig on the crownfig. 7b. Rendering of the carved wig of a limestone statuette, showing crown parting similar to that in fig. 7a. Egyptian Museum, Cairo (JE 43582)fig. 7c. Rendering of the carved wig of an ebony statuette, showing shoulder parting similar to that in fig. 1. Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (AH 167-a)A third and more disquieting feature is the form of the statuette’s surviving arm: eccentrically angled and positioned, it appears to break every rule of Egyptian sculptural representation. Yet it is clear that the three surviving components of the artwork—torso, arm, and axle—share a long common history, and thus that a crooked right arm was indeed part of the original design. Microscopic examination confirms that the arm is carved from a wood similar to the wood of the torso, while XRF readings for this limb are consistent with those of the main figure. The undue width of the surviving right shoulder, moreover, would seem to rule out any suggestion of modern alteration—i.e., the possibility that the statuette might originally have been a static work that was subsequently “improved” in modern times by sawing off the arms, hollowing out the torso, and adding a winding mechanism.The most convincing of all the evidence supporting the statuette’s proposed age and authenticity is the revelation that the figure’s curious pose is not unique. Two direct parallels have now been identified: one in Berlin (fig. 8a), which, like the Metropolitan’s sculpture, covers the genital area with its right hand; and a closely similar piece on the website of the Young Museum of Ancient Cultural Arts, Burnet, Texas, which shields with the left (fig. 8b).22 Albeit with bodies somewhat fuller in form than that of the Metropolitan Museum figure, and wearing wigs of a significantly shorter, more fashionable style, these two images represent obvious variations on the same theme, differing from the Museum’s work only in date.23 With the Metropolitan statuette to be assigned to the earlier part of the Third Intermediate Period on grounds of material analysis and style, the two static images, judged on the basis of style alone, are clearly slightly later.24fig. 8a. Wood statuette with pose similar to that seen in fig. 1. H. 10¼ in. (26 cm). Ägyptishes Museum, Berlin (12662)fig. 8b. Wood statuette with pose similar to that seen in fig. 1. H. 9½ in. (24.1 cm). Private collectionPart II: Establishing meaning and significanceIdentityAn important though seldom discussed feature of ancient Egyptian art is the greater compositional freedom accorded the minor arts in comparison with larger, more formal sculptures in stone. This can be explained in part by the fact that the decorative realm is where visual art and popular literature converge: it is here, for example, in a range of casual, two-dimensional contexts, that we find images alluding to the Myth of the Sun’s Eye.25 In three dimensions, other art-text crossovers are evidently to be recognized in a number of recurring, rule-flouting representations: the kitten-holding girl casually brushing back her hair, the dwarf struggling under the weight of an enormous jar, the dancer turning her head to cast a backward glance as she lifts her skirt.26 Since only the smallest portion of Egyptian folk tales has come down to us, the literary contexts of these images have mostly been lost; to the ancients, however, the allusions would have been obvious, neatly conveyed by a singular pose or meaningful gesture.Is it possible that the Metropolitan’s statuette conceals a similar literary reference? The evidence suggests that it might.“The Contendings of Horus and Seth” is a coarsely humorous tale about an official hearing, held before Re-Harakhty and the Great Ennead, to assess the respective claims advanced by Horus and Seth to succeed to the throne of the deceased Osiris.27 At the particular point in the story that interests us (fig. 9), the sun god has retired from the fray offended and has fallen into a deep depression. Alan Gardiner’s translation of the relevant passage takes up the narrative:fig. 9. Papyrus Chester Beatty I, ca. 1147–1143 b.c., recto, p. 4. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin(4, 1) And the great god [Re-Harakhty] passed a day / lying upon his back in his arbour, and his heart was very sore, and he was alone.(2) And after a long space / Hathor, the lady of the southern sycomore, came and stood before her father, the Master of the Universe, and she uncovered her nakedness before his face.(3) And the great god / laughed at her….28This story is of interest on several levels. Beyond its simple amusement value, the episode has an important propagandist aim, which is to affirm the goddess Hathor’s pivotal role in the maintenance of the cosmic order (maat).29 Through this narrative, Hathor’s unique power is emphasized: she alone possesses the ability to rouse her sun-god father from his lethargy and persuade him to reengage with the world, and she achieves this feat by revealing her “nakedness.”Gardiner’s rendering of the text at this point, however, is so imprecise as to be misleading, with the translation “nakedness” concealing a “grosser” but far more illuminating word: kȝt, “vagina.”30 The deliberate exposure of Hathor’s sex so forcefully brings to mind the poses of the Berlin and Young Museum figures and the mechanical action of the Metropolitan Museum’s statuette that all three are surely to be recognized as referencing this same lewd act.31 In short, “The Contendings of Horus and Seth” confirms all three works not only as images of a goddess (a possibility already implied by the Egyptian-blue wig inlay of the Metropolitan’s piece) but as manifestations of the preeminent divinity Hathor in her guise as “lady of the vulva” (nb.t ḥtp.t).32RoleWhat was the intended function of the Museum’s doll-like carving? There are several possibilities for such string-operated figures.A forthcoming textual study by Alexandra von Lieven identifies comparable objects in a long-known autobiography from the early Eighteenth Dynasty: two goddess figures, Nekhbet and probably Wadjet, with operable arms perhaps not dissimilar from those of the Metropolitan’s piece.33 These figures represent component parts of a seemingly unique “super clock” invented by the owner of Theban tomb C2, Amenemhat, and anticipate by a millennium and more the string-operated automata later devised by Heron of Alexandria (ca. a.d. 10–70).34Less sophisticated in design than the Amenemhat mechanism but perhaps closer to what we see represented in the Metropolitan Museum figure are the independent string-operated images mentioned by Herodotus in his description of the Egyptian “festival of Dionysus,” an important text reminding us that ancient Egyptian objects with movable parts are not always to be regarded as childish playthings.35[2] The rest of the festival of Dionysus is observed by the Egyptians much as it is by the Greeks, except for the dances; but in place of the phallus, they have invented the use of puppets (νϵυρόσπαστα) two feet high moved by strings, the male member nodding and nearly as big as the rest of the body, which are carried about the villages by women; a flute-player goes ahead, the women follow behind singing of Dionysus. [3] Why the male member is so large and is the only part of the body that moves, there is a sacred legend that explains.36The well-known group of ivory dancing dwarfs found at Lisht (South Pyramid Cemetery) by the Metropolitan Museum’s Egyptian Expedition in 1933–34 falls into a similar category (fig. 10).37 Discovered on the threshold of a Twelfth Dynasty tomb, this small tableau seems originally to have belonged to a young girl named Hepy, whose other possessions (found alongside the dwarfs) we now see point to an association with the goddess Hathor.38fig. 10. Three views of a dancing dwarfs tableau. Egyptian, ca. 1950–1900 b.c. Ivory, H. of figures 2½ in. (6.4 cm). Separate figure at top left: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1934 (34.1.130); rest of tableau: Egyptian Museum, Cairo (JE 63858)A principal role of Hathor and of dwarfs in general was, of course, to entertain. One aspect of the goddess’s entertainment skills has been recounted above in the discussion of “The Contendings of Horus and Seth.” For dwarfs, we have a famous inscription in the tomb of Harkhuf at Qubbet el-Hawa, Aswan, which mentions “a dwarf (dng) who dances for the god”—a gift for the young Pepi II (ca. 2246–2152 b.c.) from the land of Iam.39 Another inscription, Pyramid Text spell P465, makes reference to the king himself as “a dng of the god’s dances, an entertainer before [his] great seat.”40 Both dwarf references point up an interesting fact: that the rituals carried out on behalf of the gods consisted of more than simple censing, the offering of food, and the changing of the divine images’ clothes; it is clear that periodically the divine presence required meaningful entertainment also.The evidence combines to suggest for the Lisht dwarfs a cultic role, and this, by extension, hints at a possible and legitimate function for the Metropolitan’s statuette. In whatever manner Hathor’s mechanical image was actually employed—whether by a priest in the immediate presence of a cult image (of Re), or before a wider, festal audience—the reenactment of the goddess’s sexual exposure went far beyond ordinary amusement.41 The function of the Metropolitan Museum figure was both serious and profound: to reenergize the supreme deity, and by so doing guarantee the continued functioning of the cosmos.PoseTo understand the precise nature of the entertainment offered by the Museum’s piece, it is essential to consider how the work might have appeared when complete—i.e., how the missing left arm was originally arranged. As described above, for this figure two static parallels may be invoked, one in Berlin and one shown on the website of the Young Museum (see figs. 8a, b). For these parallels, several similarly static variants exist with arms arranged in other ways (see below, “Related Images in Wood”).42 Because the New York figure’s arms were both conjoined and movable, however, the options for their original positioning are greatly reduced. In fact, only one reconstruction is both mechanically feasible and physically meaningful, and that is a pose in which the left arm, echoing the function of the right, is artfully arranged first to conceal and then to reveal the breasts (fig. 11).fig. 11. Diagrams of fig. 1, with reconstruction of missing left arm shown in lowered and raised positionsNot only is this pudica (“modest” or “shameful”) pose attested elsewhere in the Egyptian archaeological record—in another, privately owned static image, again conceivably of Hathor (or of one of her priestesses), this time shown clothed and wearing a plain tripartite wig (fig. 12)—but physical proof of the positioning of the Metropolitan statuette’s missing left arm may in fact be discerned in the condition of the object itself.43 It can be no coincidence that the work displays surface damage at precisely the point where a conjoined left arm arranged to cover the breasts would, when lifted, have impacted the nose and chin (fig. 13). It is obvious, moreover, that repeated impacts over time would have placed considerable strain on the tenon, causing it eventually to fail and the limb to become detached.fig. 12. Figure of a goddess (Hathor?). Wood, H. 29⅛ in. (74 cm). Private collection, Romefig. 13. Detail of fig. 1, showing damage to the nose and mouth probably resulting from repeated impacts by the missing left armSignificanceWhat did the ancient craftsman seek to achieve by incorporating a mechanism into this figural type? Recall for a moment the Lisht tableau and the motion it sought to capture—not a single, one-off movement, but the twisting, to-and-fro choreography of a troupe of dancing dwarfs (see fig. 10). Was it perhaps by means of a similar, cheekily comic dance that Hathor first gladdened the sun god’s heart? Was this how Hathor’s crude physical exposure was in practice reenacted in temples and festivals? Was the intended aim of the Metropolitan Museum’s piece to capture, through the repeated operation of its mechanism, the fundamental movements of such a ritual performance?An answer to all of these questions is suggested by the pose of the Museum’s figure: lowered, the arms not only conceal but also tease; raised, they do not merely reveal but also display. Intriguingly, the form of that display recalls a specific movement in the so-called belly dance of the Ghawazi.44 Details from romanticized Western representations of the dance, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) and David Roberts (1796–1864), here serve to illustrate the resemblance (figs. 14, 15).45fig. 14. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867). Detail of The Turkish Bath, 1832. Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, Diam. 42½ in. (108 cm). Musée du Louvre, Paris (RF 1934)fig. 15. David Roberts (Scottish, 1796–1864). The Ghawazee, or Dancing Girls, Cairo. Handcolored lithograph, 9⅞ × 14 in. (25 × 35.5 cm). Reproduced in Roberts 1849, pl. 37Is this similarity in pose mere coincidence? Perhaps not. It is interesting to note the profound moral disapproval generated in both East and West by the practitioners of Ghawazi dance: banished to Upper Egypt by Muhammad Ali in 1834 as part of his social reforms, the Ghawazi were characterized two years later by Edward William Lane as “the most abandoned of the courtesans of Egypt.”46 Charles Dudley Warner, writing of his own experiences in 1874–75, called the troupe “an aristocracy of vice.”47 If the Ghawazi or similar performers did indeed trace their origins back to Hathor, such dancing not only would have been essentially idolatrous but would have borne associations even more challenging. For in the days of the goddess, the focus was not the gyrating midriff of today’s dance but the performer’s fully exposed and deliberately proffered sexual parts (figs. 16, 17).48fig. 16. Ostracon decorated with an image of a Hathor khener dancer. Egyptian, ca. 1503–1482 b.c. Painted limestone, 4⅛ × 6⅝ in. (10.5 × 16.8 cm). Museo Egizio, Turin (7052)fig. 17. Statuette representing a Hathor khener dancer. Egyptian, ca. 1938–1630 b.c. Limestone, L. 6⅞ in. (17.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Egypt Exploration Fund (13.1024)Related Images in WoodOur discussion turns now to a series of related figures in wood (and occasionally ivory) that fall within the same object class as the Hathors of the Berlin and Young Museums—images consistently heavyset, wearing short, bobbed wigs, and all of uncertain identity. As already observed, there are several known poses.49 The one most commonly encountered is that shown in figure 18a, with arms positioned straight down by the sides; the second most frequent is seen in figure 18b, which has the left arm raised to the level of the breasts—an arrangement reminiscent of the Ishtar/Astarte figures of the Near East. Less common poses are seen in figures 8a,b, in which the hand is lowered to cover the subject’s sexual parts, and in figure 18c, in which an already strong impulse to associate the entire class with the entertainer-goddess is strengthened by the inclusion within the composition of a musical instrument.fig. 18a. Hathor image. Wood, H. 2⅛ in. (5.5 cm). Highclere Castle, Newbury, United Kingdomfig. 18b. Hathor image. Wood, H. 8¼ in. (20.9 cm). Royal-Athena Galleries, New Yorkfig. 18c. Hathor image. Wood, H. 27¼ in. (69 cm). Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich (ÄS / 2958)Why so many variations? One explanation might be that each variant is a manifestation of Hathor or her proxy in one of the various roles enacted by or for the goddess in the cultic festivities periodically held in her honor. The relief-carved surface of a Late period steatite bowl inscribed in Demotic, now in the British Museum, depicts one such celebration in full swing (fig. 19).50 It will be observed how the participants echo in their variety of poses not merely the three-dimensional Hathor types in wood, but later imagery also. The bowl’s fourth figure from the right—a woman slapping her buttocks and lifting her skirt—is of particular interest. Her action not only recalls the exposure seen in the Metropolitan Museum’s mechanical figure but serves directly to associate that work with the anasyrma (skirt-lifting) motif commonly found in a range of variously attributed terracottas of the Greco-Roman period (fig. 20).51fig. 19. Bowl showing Hathoric festival, 664–404 b.c. Steatite, carved in raised relief. Diam. 6 in. (15.3 cm). British Museum, London (47992)fig. 20. Figure of a goddess lifting her skirt, 1st century b.c. Terracotta, H. 5¾ in. (14.6 cm). Ägyptisches Museum, Universität Leipzig (3634)The suspicion that Hathor is the goddess universally represented in this wooden figural type finds ultimate confirmation in an articulated version now in Edinburgh (fig. 21).52 The peculiar manner in which this statuette’s legs are designed to move offers indisputable proof of both role and identity: the hinges at the hips allow the legs to move not only front to back from the knees down, in the usual manner, but also sideways—i.e., not only to walk, but to part and reveal. The reference, again, will be to Hathor’s sexual exposure before her father Re.fig. 21. Mobile-limbed statuette in wood with legs hinged laterally at the hips. H. 11½ in. (29.2 cm). National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh (A.1956.132)Related Images in BronzeIf the Edinburgh piece is now to be recognized as an image of Hathor, and if the attribution may indeed be extended to the entire range of poses within this figural class in wood, then it is a priori likely that a series of analogous sculptures in bronze which feature similar pivoting arms (and sometimes mobile legs) are also to be associated with the goddess (figs. 22a,b,c,d). Although these sculptures were the subject of an important discussion by Elizabeth Riefstahl more than half a century ago, few conclusions have in fact ever been reached for this important subset.53fig. 22a. Mobile-limbed Hathor figure. Later Intermediate Period. Bronze, H. 9½ in. (24.1 cm). Walters Art Museum, Acquired by Henry Walters (54.2085)fig. 22b. Mobile-limbed Hathor figure. Later Intermediate Period. Bronze, H. 6¾ in. (17 cm). Brooklyn Museum, By exchange (42.410)fig. 22c. Mobile-limbed Hathor figure. Later Intermediate Period. Bronze. Formerly Museum August Kestner, Hannover (B291), now lostfig. 22d. Mobile-limbed Hathor figure. Later Intermediate Period. Bronze, H. 5½ in. (14 cm). British Museum, London (37162)Most of the bronzes wear the same bobbed wig as the Hathor fi
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