Fragment of a Tomb Relief with Male Head

Place of OriginEgypt

Date18th Dynasty (1550-1292 BCE), about 1350 BCE

Dimensions13 1/2 × 11 3/4 in. (34.3 × 29.8 cm)
Frame: 18 1/8 × 20 1/8 × 2 in. (46 × 51.1 × 5.1 cm)

MediumLimestone with paint.

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1957.35

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 02, Classic

DescriptionThis is a finely carved and painted relief depicting a man’s head in profile, facing right. The figure is over life-size and rendered in low relief, with subtle contours and crisp outlines. The subject wears a double-layered, shoulder-length wig and a short beard. The hair is painted black, and the face is a reddish-brown tone. There are traces of ancient repairs in the wig, visible through plaster beneath original pigment.

Label TextDue to a lack of inscriptions, the identity of the man portrayed in this finely carved and well-preserved relief is unknown. However, the work’s style and appearance provide excellent clues about its original context. Over life-size, the head faces to the right and is of excellent quality, indicating its original installation in the tomb of a powerful official. Its crisp silhouette, subtle carving, and low relief signal an origin in New Kingdom Thebes, a date and location reinforced by other details. The subject’s short beard and multi-layered wig of shoulder length point to the reign of the powerful Pharaoh Amen-hotep III (1391–1353 BCE), when such features were fashionable.Published ReferencesSchätze altägyptischer Kunst (exh. cat.), Kunsthalle Basel, 1953, p. 58, no. 152.

"Accessions of American and Canadian Museum, October-December 1957," Art Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1, Spring 1958, p. 83.

Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, Summer 1960, new series, vol. 3, no. 3, p. 68, repr.

Porter, Bertha and Rosalind Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1960, vol. 1, pt. 60, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. xx.

Luckner, Kurt T., "The Art of Egypt, Part 2," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, new series, vol. 14, no.3, Fall 1971, p. 71, repr. fig. 12.

Peck, William H., Sandra E. Knudsen and Paula Reich, Egypt in Toledo: The Ancient Egyptian Collection at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Toledo Museum of Art, 2011, p. 50-51, repr. (col.) p. 11, 50, (det.) p. 49. Garde, Maxence, and Valerio, Marta, “À propos d’un vrai-faux fragment de balustrade amarnienne / About a real-false fragment of an Amarnian balustrade,” Authenticity Studies – International Journal of Archaeology and Art, no. 1 (March 2022), p. 39, fig. 10

Exhibition History

Basel, Kunsthalle, Schätze altägyptischer Kunst, June 27, 1953 – September 13, 1953.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Unseen Art of TMA: What's in the Vaults and Why?, September 12, 2004-January 2, 2005.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Egypt Experience: Secrets of the Tomb, October 29, 2010-January 8, 2012.