About the lot N° 307
Title : Granite Block Statue Of A Man
Size : height 12 3/8 in. 31.4cm.Provenance : PROPERTY FROM A EUROPEAN PRIVATE COLLECTIONCairo Museum, JE 37865 (deaccessioned between 1905 and 1906)Vladimir Gregorievitch Simkhovitch (Anderson Galleries, New York, Selections from the Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Indian, Chinese and European Collections of Vladimir Simkhovitch, January 12th-14th, 1922, no. 465, illus.)William Randolph Hearst, San Simeon (Sotheby's, London, Catalogue of the Important Collection of Antiquities, Property of Mr. William Randolph Hearst, Esq., July 11th-12th, 1939, no. 56)Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, Egyptian, Greek and Roman Art, January 15th, 1953, no. 30, illus.The Hearst Corporation (Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, Egyptian, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Gothic and Renaissance Art, Arms & Armor from the Collection of William Randolph Hearst, January 28th-29th, 1959, no. 123, illus.)Literature : Georges Legrain, Catalogue général du Musée du Caire, 42001-42138: Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers, Cairo, 1906, p. 40, no. 42174Jacques Vandier, Manuel d'archéologie égyptienne, vol. 3: Les grandes époques: la statuaire, Paris, 1958, pl. CLIII, no. 5Bertha Porter and Rosalind L. B. Moss, Topographical bibliography of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, reliefs, and paintings, 2nd Ed., Oxford, 1972, vol. 2, p. 162Regine Schulz, Die Entwicklung und Bedeutung des kuboiden Statuentypus. Eine Untersuchung zu den sogenannten 'Würfelhockern', Hildesheim, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 442f.André Wiese, Ägyptische Kunst im Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig: Neue Leihgaben, Schenkungen und Erwerbungen, Basel, 1998, p. 50, no. 55, illus. p. 49Notes : For a related naophoros block statue, also dated to the reign of Ramesses II, see Anthea Page, Egyptian Sculpture, Archaic to Saite, from the Petrie Collection, Warminster, 1976, no. 98.The column of inscription on the right shoulder includes a cartouche with the prenomen of Ramesses II and reads: Lord of the two Lands, User-maat-re Setepen-re. The two horizontal lines at the base of the naos spell out the formula: An offering that the King and Amun, the King of Kings, wish to make. The two columns of inscription on the back pillar comprise additional offering formulas invoking the god Amun of Karnak as the Living Ram, and the deities Mut of Ascheru and Khonsu of Thebes. The lack of an inscription naming the owner is unusual and suggests that the statue was inserted into a now lost base carved with the owner's name and lineage.The statue was excavated under the supervision of French archaeologist Georges Legrain on April 9th, 1905, from a trench in the courtyard of the seventh pylon in the great temple at Karnak. It was part of what would later be called the Karnak Cachette, an extremely large deposit of ancient artifacts (containing over 700 stone sculptures and 16,000 bronzes) which took two full years to clear only partially. The latest datable statue in the cachette dates to the 1st Century B.C., leading archaeologists to believe that the priests of Karnak buried the entire contents of the temple around the end of the Ptolemaic Period or the beginning of the Roman Period. On the statues from the Karnak cachette sold at public auction by the Cairo Museum shortly after their discovery see Herman de Meulenaere, The Cachette of Karnak, in Egyptian Treasures from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Francesco Tiraditti, ed., Vercelli, 1998, p. 337.On Vladimir Simkhovitch (1874-1959) see Wolf Rudolph and Adriana Calinescu, Ancient Art from the V.G. Simkhovitch Collection, Bloomington, Indiana, 1988. On William Randolph Hearst as an art collector see Victoria Kastner, Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House, New York, 2000.Sotheby's, auctioneer, New York, US
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Sale title : Egyptian, Classical, and Western Asiatic Antiquities
Sale date : 09 Dec 2004
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Sale Reference : Live Sale
