Female Offering Bearer

Among the most evocative wooden figures of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom are the offering bearers: small, brightly painted attendants created to ensure that the dead would never lack nourishment in the afterlife.

This elegant female figure, dating to the 12th Dynasty, carries a basket laden with loaves and meat upon her head. Said to have come from the Tomb of Gua at Deir el-Bersha, she represents the endless procession of provisions upon which the deceased could magically depend for eternity.

During the Middle Kingdom, wooden models became an important feature of elite burials. Some recreated entire scenes of everyday activity, including bakeries, breweries, granaries, workshops and boats, whilst others depicted solitary men and women bringing food and other necessities to the tomb owner. They were more than charming representations of Egyptian life: they were objects of magical permanence. What was depicted in the tomb could, through ritual and belief, continue to exist in the world of the dead.

Offering bearers were therefore frozen in an eternal act of generosity. With baskets balanced upon their heads and provisions in their hands, these painted wooden figures ensured that the deceased remained forever supplied, transforming the familiar rhythms of life along the Nile into an enduring promise of abundance beyond death.

Summary:

Female Offering Bearer

Middle Kingdom, 12th Dynasty, c. 1991–1802 B.C.

From Deir el-Bersha; said to be from the tomb of Gua

British Museum. EA30716