Egypt Museum

Statuette of a Young Female Servant

Statuette of a Young Female Servant (Boxwood, with traces of paint)
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, c. 1388–1349 B.C.
Musée du Louvre. E 223 (N 1582)

Carved from boxwood during the reign of Amenhotep III, this delicate statuette represents a young woman standing nude, adorned only with jewellery and a narrow girdle of what may be cowrie shells. Her head is closely shaven apart from a short fringe of finely carved hair across the forehead, a style associated with youthful female attendants and servants in New Kingdom art.

The figure’s modest scale, nudity and lack of inscription suggest that she was not intended as a portrait of an elite woman, but rather as a servant or attendant. Such figures were sometimes placed in tombs as idealised representations of those who might continue to serve the deceased in the afterlife.

Yet, she is far from crudely rendered: the sculptor carefully modelled the softness of the abdomen, the curve of the hips and the subtle asymmetry of the standing pose, characteristics of the more naturalistic artistic style favoured during the reign of Amenhotep III.

Realism

Despite the statuette’s small scale, the female form is modelled with remarkable naturalism, from the pinched waist to the softly rounded hips.

The statuette is remarkable for its quiet naturalism. Rather than reducing the female body to a rigid ideal, the sculptor has modelled a distinctly believable physique: a pinched waist widening into softly rounded hips, gently projecting buttocks, a relaxed abdomen and subtly fleshed torso. The transitions between chest, waist and pelvis are unusually fluid, giving the body a sense of weight and physical presence.

Such softened modelling accords with the increasingly naturalistic tendencies of the later 18th Dynasty, particularly in the age of Amenhotep III, when artists showed greater interest in individual anatomy and sensuous form. So convincing is the figure’s modelling that she can seem almost to have been observed directly from life, as though carved from a living model rather than constructed from an abstract canon.

Purpose

Her head is closely shaven, with a short fringe of finely plaited hair across the forehead. Two small rounded projections at the back of the scalp may also belong to the coiffure, perhaps representing tiny twists or tufts of hair, although they could instead have served as attachment points for a now-lost element.

Her left arm is bent across the torso while the right hangs beside the body. Particularly intriguing are the openings preserved in the hands, which strongly suggest that the figure originally held one or more separately fashioned objects, now lost. What these objects were cannot presently be identified with certainty. Comparable statuettes of young female attendants are shown carrying vessels, cosmetic containers, flowers, fans and even animals, and so the lost attribute need not have possessed any royal or divine significance.

The girdle is equally distinctive (possibly cowrie-shell). Such ornaments were closely associated with women, fertility and sensuality, although they were worn across different levels of Egyptian society and cannot alone be taken as evidence of servant status. Here, it is the combination of the figure’s nudity, hairstyle, anonymity and scale that has led to her interpretation as a young attendant.

Despite her humble identity, the statuette possesses the refinement characteristic of the late 18th Dynasty. The smooth wooden surface, elongated limbs and gently rounded torso transform an anonymous servant into one of the more intimate surviving images of everyday womanhood from the age of Amenhotep III.

Summary:

Statuette of a Young Female Servant (Boxwood, with traces of paint)

New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, c. 1388–1349 B.C.

Musée du Louvre. E 223 (N 1582)