Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 102-103. (Budapest, 2005)

ZOLTÁN HORVÁTH: A unique servant statue in the Egyptian Collection

friend or acquaintance as a gift, who in turn perhaps sold or passed it on."*

3 As Michael Molnar (Freud Museum London) explained it to me, the same happened to a Tanagra figurine that Freud gave to the writer Albrecht Schaeffer, who later, after leaving Austria, was forced to sell it to raise money.

44 Obviously, his friendship with Freud, as well as his deep interest in archaeology, would make Sándor Ferenczi, "father of Hungarian psychoanalysis", the most likely candidate for having received an Egyptian statuette as a present. Archaeology and acquiring artefacts were recurring themes in their correspondence; however, a reference to a special gift like this is still lacking.

4

' Moreover, assuming that Freud purchased the statue as late as in 1931 or 1932, the premature death of Ferenczi in 1933 would make this guess even more improbable. The hiatus in the history of this charming statuette is still there, but a yet uncovered reference may turn up in the future that will hopefully fill the void. THE WRITING TABLET As opposed to the statuette, the small writing board (no. 51.2197) once attached to it is more ambiguous in nature (figs. 3 and 4). While its reverse shows obvious traces of modern treatment, the imperfectly preserved hieratic inscription on the upper side is undoubtedly authentic. The small, rectangular board is carved from a single piece of wood, quite light in weight, suggesting ancient wood.

46 Its shape is rough, irregular and slightly trapezoid. Both sides are covered with a thin, ca. 1 mm-thick coating of now cracked gesso, which is significantly darker on the foreside than on the verso. This plaster coating is visible all along the right edge of the board, but only traces of it have remained on the upper (between cols. 5 and 6 of the inscription) and left edges (near the upper corner), whereas the lower edge is completely bare along its entire length. The upper surface conveys an early middle hieratic inscription arranged into six vertical lines; the reverse bears another eight columns of clumsy, meaningless signs, evidently produced later by a different hand with a different pen and ink. Most of the signs are circles, ovals or rounded forms perhaps influenced by the hieratic equivalents of Q, ^/jand whereas some of the uppermost signs of each column (especially 1-3), intended as a sort of heading, resemble more complex hieratic signs: some human figure may be discerned in the initial signs of cols. 1-2, while that of col. 3 obviously reproduces (My The plausible conclusion is that the forger was influenced during his work by what he had seen on the other side of the board.