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

ZOLTÁN HORVÁTH: A unique servant statue in the Egyptian Collection

early Middle Kingdom) must be mentioned here as a doubtful exception: on the upper level, beside the clerk sits another squatting figure with both arms pointing forward as if he is directing the workmen below. However, beyond his position, nothing else indicates that a higher status should be attributed to him, so he could equally be the man who used to keep count of the amount of grain stored or issued, calling out for the scribe to record, see R. Parkinson and S. Quirke, Papyrus, London 1995, 37, fig. 2 3; R. Parkinson, Cracking Codes. The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment, London 1999, 128, no. 42. These photographs served later in London as a reliable aid to arrange the relics exactly as they had been placed in Bergasse 19 before the move. A photograph showing the top of the cabinet and the shelf crowded with figurines was published in Freud: Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten, eds. E. L. Freud and I. Grubrich-Simitis, Frankfurt 1978, 234, flg. 263. 16 Both statues are unpublished. 17 Figure of a scribe holding a writing board, gessoed and painted wood, height: 1 1.5 cm; width: 10.8 cm (including the full length of the board.); London, Freud Museum, inv. no. 3279. Special thanks go to Keith Davies (Freud Museum, London) for providing me with photographs and with all the available information concerning the statuettes. 18 Figure of a scribe holding a stylus; gessoed and painted wood, height: 12.3 cm; width: 6.3 cm; London, Freud Museum, inv. no. 3282. V) Breasted 1948, 1-2; cf. B. van de Walle, "A propos d'une figurine de scribe acquise par le département égyptien des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire," Bulletin des Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire 3, no. 7 (1935), 106-11. Examples are numerous. In a wooden model, e.g., dated to the early Middle Kingdom in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, a scribe with a writing board sits on the upper level of a granary accompanied by an assistant and the figure of an overseer, while in the courtyard two workmen are measuring grain into bushels and another standing figure apparently keeps count of it. There is a plaster-covered writing board affixed onto the clerk's schematised lower body with a peg that pierces through the left hand. The scribe holds a stylus in his slightly raised right hand kept over the tablet, and another pen, in all likelihood for red ink, is tucked behind his right ear. The position of the head implies that the scribe is paying attention to someone else: as Jorgensen aptly remarked, "the impression is that the man standing in the courtyard, counting the bushels calls out the totals and the scribe writes them down and adds them up". Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. no. vEIN 1689, Saqqara, tomb of Gemni, reign of Amenemhat I, see M. Jorgensen, Catalogue Egypt I (3000-1550 B.C.) Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen 1996, 132. Furthermore, pegging can also be evidenced in the case of Plildesheim, Pelizaeus Museum, inv. no. 1689: a model granary from Assyut (?) with a scribe sitting on the top of the wall that stands for the façade of the