Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2007)

KATALIN ANNA KÓTHAY: A Defective Statuette from the Thirteenth Dynasty and the Sculptural Production of the Late Middle Kingdom

various origins. Therefore the provenance of the statuette given in the catalogue, which in all probability Bonifác Platz learned from a dealer, cannot be accepted as being absolutely reliable. However, Abydos, a major pilgrimage site in which both tomb and votive statues were discovered in large quantities, and which served as a centre for the production of small-scale statues carved in hard dark stone in the late Middle Kingdom,

3 still remains a highly probable candidate. Bonifác Platz dated the statuette to the New Kingdom.

4 According to the museum catalogue card the piece is datable to either the Late Period or the Middle Kingdom, though more credence has been given to its Middle Kingdom origin by Edith Varga.

1 Today the statuette can be clearly dated to the Middle Kingdom and since more research has been carried out on private statuary of the period there is more in-depth understanding of the subject thus making it possible to establish an even closer date for the piece, which can now be attributed to the Thirteenth Dynasty/' The statuette is made of a basic igneous rock, either basalt or dolerite.

7 Its maximum height is 17.5 cm,

8 its width 5.3 cm, and its depth 5.4 cm. It is intact, though surface fissures, as well as cracks on the right arm and on the top of the pedestal base can be observed. On the underside of the base two bores are visible that have clearly been drilled in modern times. This is a crudely polished piece with traces of tool marks detectable all over the surface, and the final polishing was not carried out. The base and the feet are modelled in an extremely crude fashion and are distorted. The base is rough on the underside, while the kilt near the left arm is left unmodelled. There are marked asymmetries in the shaping of the figure. At the same time, the face, while