Ostracon with Two Jackals
Unknown · Ramesside period, c. 1295-1069 BC
Two slender canids, foxes or jackals, are painted on a small flake of limestone barely ten centimetres across. They are shown in the act of mating, drawn with a few quick strokes and washed with colour, the pointed ears and bushy tails caught in a moment of observation. Beside them a single line of hieratic, the cursive script of everyday writing, gives a name. There is no frame, no formal composition, just the eye of someone who knew the animals of the desert edge and enjoyed drawing them.
The flake comes from the rubbish heaps of Deir el-Medina, the village on the west bank of Thebes where the workmen who cut and decorated the royal tombs lived during the Ramesside period, between about twelve ninety five and ten sixty nine BC. Thousands of ostraca from the village show that these craftsmen sketched for pleasure as well as for work, and animals behaving like humans, or simply behaving like animals, were among their favourite subjects. The French excavations under Bernard Bruyère recovered this piece, and it came to the Louvre in nineteen thirty four through the division of finds.
Did You Know? A single line of cursive hieratic on the flake gives a personal name, perhaps the artist's or a friend's, turning a scribble into a signed sketch.
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