The Seated Scribe
Unknown · c. 2600-2350 BC (Old Kingdom, 4th to 5th Dynasty)
We do not know his name. The statue was found without its base, and with it went the inscription that would have told us who he was and what offices he held. What survives is a man sitting cross legged on the ground in the working posture of an Egyptian scribe, a half unrolled papyrus across his lap, his right hand once holding a reed brush now lost. Literacy was the route to power in Old Kingdom Egypt, and to be shown at work with a papyrus was a boast, not a modesty.
The body is carved from limestone and painted, the skin a reddish brown, the nipples marked with small wooden pegs. Egyptian tomb sculpture usually presents idealised, eternally youthful bodies, which makes the realism here startling: the chest sags slightly, the belly has a roll of fat, the shoulders are set with the weariness of a man who sits all day. Above all there are the eyes, among the finest inlays to survive from antiquity. Each is a copper frame holding a white of magnesite with a polished rock crystal cornea, drilled and darkened behind to form a pupil, so that the stare follows you across the room. Move slowly sideways and watch it track.
Auguste Mariette's workmen found him on 19 November 1850 in a shaft at Saqqara north, near the avenue leading to the Serapeum, and he was registered in the Louvre inventory on 16 December 1854. Dating is debated between the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties. He has been loaned abroad only rarely, and his 1998 restoration revealed traces of the original paint still clinging in the folds of the papyrus.
Did You Know? The inlaid eyes are made of copper, magnesite and rock crystal, with a tiny hole drilled behind each cornea to hold the pigment that forms the pupil.
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