EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

POLYCHROME-PAINTED LIMESTONE STELE 

EGYPTIAN, MIDDLE KINGDOM, EARLY 12TH DYNASTY, CIRCA 1938-1850 B.C. 

Framed by a torus moulding with a cornice above. The stele is painted with a male and female figure facing right (husband and wife) and holding hands. The husband holds a lotus blossom, a table is before them with offerings of food and drink, three water fowl fly above the wife’s head. With a two line-inscription in hieroglyphic and hieratic text reading “(O) Horus, Great of Respect. I am a falcon of gold I am ….”. 

Height 40.9 cm. 

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PROVENANCE 

Otto Oekerus, Berlin, 1950s 

Anonymous collection: Sotheby’s, Frankfurt (in association with Mak van Waay, Amsterdam), 13-14 May 1976, no. 600 

Private collection, Germany, 1976-2016: Sotheby’s, New York, 15 December 2016, lot 33 

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COMMENT 

For a closely related example in the the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, (F1937/12.1) see F.W. von Bissing, Denkmäler ägyptischer Skulptur, Munich, 1914, pl. 32, text 32. fig. 15. 

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