An Old Kingdom Gentleman Who Endured

Beneath the quiet lights of the Brooklyn Museum rests the head of a tomb statue, carved in limestone and once painted in warm honey-brown tones: a complexion both lifelike and luminous, as though the gentleman had only just stepped out of Egypt’s Old Kingdom sun. His wig, fashioned in the familiar tiered “helmet” style of the period, sits neatly about his brow in carefully carved layers, the very picture of courtly grooming c. 2500–2350 B.C.

Although his features have suffered the all-too-familiar wounds of time (a hacked nose here, a chipped cheek there) a serene dignity lingers still. The sculptor’s hand has endowed him with that unmistakable calm one finds in Old Kingdom statuary: the softly modelled cheeks, the quiet composure of the lips, the gentle strength of a face at peace with eternity. Even damaged, he radiates the poise of an era that prized order, permanence, and the stillness of the idealised human form.

Gifted to the museum by the Ernest Erickson Foundation, this piece likely once hailed from the great cemetery landscapes of the Memphite region: perhaps from Saqqara or Giza, where such limestone tomb statues were traditionally placed to house the Ka of the deceased.

Though the precise find spot is lost, his style, material, and serene expression whisper of those sun-washed necropolises that lined the western desert, where the dead of Egypt’s earliest golden age slept beneath drifting sands.

If one peers closely into the eye sockets, one notices they are carved to a remarkable depth: a gentle hint that they once cradled inlaid eyes of precious stone. Their absence may well account for the damage upon the face; perhaps those coveted inlays were prised out by ancient hands, long ago, when tomb robbers sought treasure rather than beauty.

Summary:

Head from a Tomb Statue of a Man

Old Kingdom, 5th Dynasty, c. 2500–2350 B.C.

Brooklyn Museum. 86.226.1