Fragment of limestone raised relief with remains of original paint, representing three mourning women. They stand, facing left, each holding the flaps of their dress in one hand and beating their breast with the other. Surviving paint is concentrated in the areas of their upper and middle bodies. Some blackish and brownish patches over surface....
This Faiyum portrait of a young woman dates from around 100-200 A.D., and depicts an Egyptian woman with hair tied back in a bun and styled in ringlets, wearing a dusty pink and rust tunic, with thick eyebrows, and baretta earrings. She has a slight Mona-Lisa smile as she gazes ahead. These portraits, known as...
This golden Ram’s-head amulet was probably made for a necklace worn by one of the Kushite kings. Representations show these pharaohs wearing a ram’s-head amulet tied around the neck on a thick cord, the ends of which fall forward over the shoulders. Sometimes a smaller ram’s head is attached to each end. Rams were associated...
This colossal limestone bust depicts a female figure wearing what is known as the ‘Hathor wig’, which has wide lappets on either side of the face that curve at the ends and a very broad lappet at the back. This sort of wig has been named after the goddess Hathor because it resembles her hairstyle,...
Yuya and Thuya are the parents of Queen Tiye, the beloved Great Royal Wife of king Amenhotep III. The pair were buried at the famous Valley of the Kings, within their tomb known as KV46, which was discovered in February of 1905 by by the British Egyptologist James E. Quibell, during excavations funded by the...
This gilded cartonnage mask shows Yuya wearing a long wig. His eyebrows and eyes are inlaid with blue glass, marble and obsidian. He wears an elaborate collar that goes beneath his wig. It consists of eleven rows of golden beads and it ends in teardrop-shaped pendants. The inside of the mask is covered in bitumen....
These limestone fragments were originally part of a scene in which royal hairdressers attended Queen Neferu. The relief on the right represents Neferu, referred to as “The King’s Wife,” wearing a magnificent beaded usekh collar. Behind her, Henut, the hairdresser, has already pinned one strand of hair and twisted another. The relief on the left...
“Paddle dolls” got their nickname from their likeness to modern Ping-Pong paddles. They all include exaggerated images of female genitalia. Some are painted with crude representations of couples having sexual intercourse, while others have pictures of birth-gods. The motif of birth and reproduction shows that “paddle dolls” increased fertility for both the living and, most...
Head of a woman (momie de femme), discovered at Thebes in 1799. Little is known about the identity of the woman, but she dates from between the New Kingdom Period and Late Period (when the last Native rulers of Ancient Egypt held power), c. 1550–332 B.C. Mummified head of a woman (momie de femme), discovered...
This glazed tile of a Nubian is from the remnants of a palace built by Ramesses III in Tell el-Yahudiyeh. This tile is only surviving in shards and has lost most of its former colour and gloss. Tell el Yahudiyeh is a city in Egypt’s Eastern Delta. The site has remnants dating from the Second...
