Old Kingdom Treasures

This magnificent pair of painted limestone statues belonged to Prince Rahotep, a son of Snofru, and Princess Nofret, his wife.  Found in a mastaba tomb at Meidum, their wonderful state of preservation makes it hard to believe that these statues are over 4,500 years old.  In common with all Egyptian statues, the finished stone was overlaid with a fine layer of plaster and painted.  The skin tones for men and women were completely different; women being depicted as paler through less exposure to the sun.  Nofret, unusually for a woman, wears a long cloak over her dress.   Her jewels are detailed in brightly colored paint.  The inlaid eyes of both statues - rock crystal with amethyst irises - give them an astonishing liveliness, especially when illuminated in a beam of light.  It is interesting to note that the majority of such inlaid eyes show blue-gray, not brown, coloring. 4th Dynasty

This cross-legged statue with the amazingly lifelike eyes is one of a number of "seated scribes," a theme upon which Egyptian sculptors lavished some of their greatest talents. Of the many seated scribes, those of the Old Kingdom are the most remarkable. Particularly notice the inlaid eyes, a feature that has elicited the admiration of scholars, sculptors and, not least, physicians ever since the statues were discovered. The practice of furnishing statues with inlaid eyes was continued at least into the New Kingdom, but the art was at its very height only during the 4th-Dynasty. Scholars studying the techniques employed conclude that the Egyptians must have understood not only the anatomy of the eye but also its refractive properties which they approximated by using combinations of stones and crystals (up to four different kinds in a single eye).  Early 5th Dynasty

This majestic diorite-gneiss statue depicts   Khafre, fourth ruler of the 4th-Dynasty and builder of the second pyramid at Giza. The pharaoh is seated on a throne that rests on a high base.  The backrest reaches the pharaoh's shoulders above which is a falcon protectively enfolding the pharaoh's head with its wings.  The feet of the throne are carved in the form of the paws of the lions whose heads decorate the front of the seat.   The side panels between the legs of the lions carry the characteristic sema-tawy decorative motif in relief, the symbol of the 'union of the two lands'.  The motif is composed of the two heraldic plants of Lower and Upper Egypt, the papyrus and the lotus, whose stems entwine around the hieroglyph for the windpipe and lungs, which can be read as 'unite'.  Khafre wears the nemes headdress and a shendyt kilt.   The regal face is adorned with a false beard.  This statue was found upside down in a pit in Khafre's valley temple. The statue is generally acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of world sculpture. In terms of technique and expressiveness, this would be a marvel of sculpture even if it were carved from marble or some other easily managed stone, but it is carved from diorite, a granitic rock among the hardest known. 4th Dynasty