Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 102-103. (Budapest, 2005)
ZOLTÁN HORVÁTH: A unique servant statue in the Egyptian Collection
they invariably keep their left arm over the board in line with the right arm, and the writing tablet needs no other support than the block-shaped lower body. Even so, numerous reliefs and wall paintings showing scribes at work beautifully echo the gesture of the Freud statuettes: for instance, on a limestone relief-fragment in the Louvre, a "scribe of the board" is shown squatting and writing on what appears to be a wooden tablet held at an angle in his left hand (fig. 10). 2f ' Similar scenes from tomb chapels, very frequent and easily accessible, could have been the model and source of inspiration for the forger, who would have known well that producing a high-quality forgery, able to deceive customers, requires a deep familiarity with the subject matter. The yellowish colouring of the imperfectly preserved Budapest statuette has long since been recognised as atypical, bearing in mind that in ancient Egyptian art, ochre was reserved for the flesh-colour of females and males were painted red or brick red —although exceptions do exist. 2 'The two statuettes in the Freud Museum, which are of a significantly better state of preservation, suggest that the gesso was first given a faint ochre coating, then large patches of dark red paint were applied to it, in all likelihood to assign an ancient, worn look to the artefacts. 28 These suspicious features, coupled with the fact that the reverse of the writing board bears evidence of modern treatment, admit the claim that the Freud statuettes, including that in the Budapest collection, are modern confections. 2 '' If these statuettes are fakes, they are not the only ones in the Sigmund Freud collection: increasing scholarly interest in Freud's antiquities has exposed that some of his acquisitions, highly regarded by the owner, are in fact forgeries; many of them he may have acquired by gift. 30 Freud was an eager collector, but he pursued genuine FIGURE OF A SQUATTING SCRIBE HOLDING A STYLUS. LONDON. FREUD MUSEUM. INV. NO. 3282
