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Offering Bearer from Asyut
Unknown · Early Middle Kingdom, c. 2045-1680 BC
A young woman strides forward on her left foot, a basket balanced on her head and steadied by her raised left hand, a duck held by the wings in the other. She wears a long white dress held by a single strap, a short wig with a braid down the back, and a band across her forehead. The wood is sycamore fig, the everyday timber of Egypt, covered with stucco and painted in yellow, white, black and a purplish brown; the colours are unusually fresh. Look at the narrow waist and long legs, and at the calm, slightly smiling face: she is an idealised servant, elegant rather than laborious.
Offering bearers like this were placed in tombs of the Middle Kingdom to supply the dead with food and drink by magic, a personal, portable version of the offering scenes carved on temple walls. They usually came in pairs or in processions. This one was found in the cemetery of Asyut in Middle Egypt by the French excavations of 1903 and came to the Louvre the same year under the division of finds. Asyut produced some of the finest painted wooden figures of the period.
Did You Know? She has walked out of a tomb: figures like her were placed beside the coffin to bring the dead their food forever.
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