76-Offering Figurine

From the late Old Kingdom to the end of the reign of Senwosret III (ca. 2300–1819 BCE), elite burials contained three-dimensional wooden models of daily life activities. Tomb models were frequently placed around or on the coffin in the burial chamber or shaft.¹ Models represented methods of transportation, agriculture, food production, and food and craft offerings. Tomb models, in a similar way to Middle Kingdom tomb wall scenes, made manifest the relationship between the tomb owner and activities to be undertaken for the maintenance of the mortuary cult.²

In this model, the offering figure strides forward wearing a typical white sheath dress with a seam at the waist and two wide straps modeled in the wood. She holds a large woven basket on her head with her right hand. A collection of foodstuffs is painted on the top of the basket. Her left hand holds the lead for a small horned animal, likely a gazelle, walking at her heel.^1:1

Contemporary Middle Kingdom tomb paintings depict similar figures identified by the names of funerary estates that produced offerings for the cult of the deceased. Uninscribed model offering figures can be understood to represent offerings brought from the deceased’s mortuary estates, whose land, people, and products maintained their ancestor cult.

EW

1. Tooley 1995, 14. ↩︎ ↩︎

2. For an expanded discussion, see Nyord forthcoming. ↩︎