Cosmetic Spoon with a Swimming Girl
Unknown · Reign of Amenhotep III, c. 1388-1349 BC
A naked girl stretches out full length as if swimming, her arms extended to push a small oval box in front of her. Her wig falls in triangular flaps beside her face, a belt circles her waist and a collar her neck. The box she presents has the shape of a cartouche, the ring that enclosed royal names, and its lid is carved with three fish nibbling at a lotus leaf. The whole object is thirty four centimetres long, carved from carob wood, with engraved details and traces of paint. Look at the curve of the girl's body: the wood has been shaped so that she seems to float.
Spoons of this kind held cosmetics or precious unguents, and the swimming girl was a favourite design of the reign of Amenhotep the Third, around thirteen seventy BC, when Egyptian luxury art reached its most playful. The theme carries a meaning too: the girl in the water with the lotus and the fish evokes the marsh where life began, and so the spoon promised renewal to its owner. The Louvre bought this example at a public sale in June eighteen thirty four, in the early years of the Egyptian department.
Did You Know? The container the girl pushes in front of her is shaped like a royal cartouche, so her perfume was literally held inside the king's name.
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