Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 102-103. (Budapest, 2005)
ZOLTÁN HORVÁTH: A unique servant statue in the Egyptian Collection
A FINAL NOTE ON FREUD'S ANTIQUITIES This small wooden statuette, which was formerly owned by Sigmund Freud, is a charming example of how to make well-laboured fakes even more attractive and easier to sell by applying minor but genuine works of art to them. 80 The procedure, however, was never restricted to forgeries; local villagers plundering elite tombs at Assyut and Meir have "restored" wooden models —mostly inaptly —by making smaller-scale repairs: a model scene of ploughing with a missing base in the collection of the Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim has been replaced with a plank from a Middle Kingdom rectangular coffin, cut to size, and still retaining a part of the offering formula. 81 This strategy is most certainly coeval with the propagation of locally produced imitations in Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century, stimulated by an increased interest from Europe in the land of the pharaohs. The forgers quickly discovered that employing ancient materials and using traditional methods in manufacture w r ould improve the quality of their forgeries, which in turn could deceive the less experienced customers, such as the early travellers invading the Nile Valley. Servant statuettes have always been especially popular with the forgers: not merely because their inherently crude design and often ill-proportioned physique made them easy to reproduce, but they were also found charming, desirable artefacts by amateur collectors. For Freud, who was undoubtedly ignorant of the ambiguous nature of his statuettes, possessing these artefacts meant "colonizing antiquity for his purposes". 82 He was a very determined and conscious collector, making a great effort to acquire authentic works of art only. Genuineness would have been an essential property of ancient objects in the eyes of a scholar who used both the methodology and language of archaeology to describe the psychoanalytic procedure: "... I had no choice but to follow the example of those discoveries whose good fortune it is to bring to the light of day after their long burial the priceless though mutilated relics of antiquity." 83 Skimming through the vast amount of objects, it may appear as if there was no comprehensive theme for collecting. A salient feature of the assemblage is, however, the overwhelming majority of statues and pieces of figurai art. 84 These were held in high repute by their owner, their attentive gaze emphasising their constant presence in Freud's study and consultation room, even today. 85 A number of these statuettes surrounded the central figure of Athena on Freud's desk, and facing the scholar, these records of the intellect of past eras provided him with a fruitful source of inspiration.
