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

ZOLTÁN HORVÁTH: A unique servant statue in the Egyptian Collection

an object, or better, revaluing an ancient artefact after a shorter or longer period of aging is socially determined. Being deposed or put on view in a museum, Egyptian antiquities, like other relics of the past, have been detached from their original spatio-temporal context, in the absence of which they assume a mutable and reflective character insofar as collectors and visitors are inclined to project their desires into them and read into these ancient objects what they please.

1

'

6 It has been demonstrated that ancient Egyptian works of art are highly valued because of their rarity and durability that gives viewers an illusion of immortality. It lends museum artefacts an exhibition value that will most certainly vanish if they are pronounced to be fakes.

97 On the other hand, an object of the past (no matter how distant or near in the past) has a long history comparable to human aging, in the course of which the object has become imprinted with traces of long-dead individuals who once owned, held or simply touched it or with whom it had been associated in one way or another. The more eminent these individuals were in our contemporary eyes, the more alluring to make a connection with them through our sense of touch. This is what Lynn Meskell defined in her excellent treatment of materiality in pharaonic Egypt as an "heirloom quality" of the object.

98 As to the scribe statuette in Budapest, what bestows prestige upon it is exactly its former intimate connection with Sigmund Freud, a man of intellect who exerted a decisive influence on the spirit of our age, and it truly recompenses us for the loss of a different kind of value that derives normally from temporal and cultural distance between our world and the ancient work of art. Zoltán Horváth is a research fellow at the Department of the Egyptian Collection, Museum of Eine Arts, Budapest.