Duck-Shaped Cosmetic Box
Unknown · Late Bronze Age, circa 1550 to 1150 BC
A duck floats on the shelf, its neck turned back so that the head rests along its body, carved from the creamy ivory of a hippopotamus tooth. The hollow body, fourteen centimetres long, was a box for cosmetics, and the swivelling wings that once served as a lid have left their traces. Look closely for faint blue pigment in the carved details; the duck was originally coloured.
Boxes like this were made in Egypt, where the hunted duck was a familiar image of the marshes, and exported along the Levantine coast; the museum classes this one as an Egyptian import. It was excavated at Minet el Beida, the port of Ugarit, in nineteen thirty-one, and came to the Louvre in the division of finds. Hippopotamus ivory was easier to obtain than elephant tusk and was much used for small containers. The women and men of Ugarit's wealthy households kept their eye paint and perfumed ointments in such boxes, and the duck's presence in a Syrian port shows how thoroughly Egyptian luxury goods had penetrated the Levant in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC.
Did You Know? Duck-shaped cosmetic boxes were an Egyptian speciality, and this one travelled to the Syrian coast as a luxury import.
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