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
from the ribcage. 19 The nipples are not indicated. The arms show no anatomical details, except that they become narrower at the wrists, but the elbows are not marked. Asymmetries are also obvious in the treatment of the arms: the left arm is slightly longer than the right and the left hand is larger than the right. As a result of the misalignment of the shoulders, the two arms are positioned asymmetrically themselves, the right one held along the side, while the left one is placed a little closer to the front of the kilt. The fingers are made in relief, instead of being rounded, with bulky tips. The nails are not modelled. The legs, of which only the ankles and feet are visible, are rendered very crudely. A drop shaped incision can be seen on either side of the outer part of the feet, which were evidently intended to mark the ankles. The feet are broad with the toes modelled in a similar fashion to the fingers, the nails are not shown. The right foot of the figure is deformed (fig. 1). It seems as though the sculptor had damaged the base while working, and thus he lacked the space to carve the foot into its right shape. As a result of this accident the figure looks club-footed: the right foot is twisted making it appear as if the figure were walking on the outer edge of its foot. 2 " Clearly due to the same damage to the base only three of the five toes on the right foot are modelled, while the big and the second toes were left uncarved from the uneven surface of the base. The trapezoid pedestal base is extremely narrow with rounded corners in front. Its width is not greater than that of the two feet put together. Pedestal bases with almost the same width as the lower portion of the figure typically occurred with squatting statues during the Middle Kingdom. 21 While a few late Middle Kingdom striding statues also exhibit narrow bases, the width of the pedestal is always wider than that of the lower width of the back pillar. 22 The Budapest statuette is unique in that the lower part of the back pillar and the pedestal base have the same width and almost the whole top surface of the base is covered. Again, the reason for this must be due to the above discussed mishap, a further result of which is that the pedestal base is not rectangular but trapezoid in form and deviates from the alignment of the figure by an angle of 20°. When observing the right side of the lower part of the statuette, it becomes clear that the right foot was originally intended to be carved in its correct position, since the heel is aligned with the frontal figure (fig. 4). So is the rear of the right side of the base, biowever, after about two centimeters they both turn slightly to the left, departing from the originally planned direction. From the frontal view, it appears as if the figure had been placed diagonally across the pedestal base (fig. 1), while, from the back, it is clear that the left loot and the left side of the base are parallel with each other, although they deviate from the alignment of the figure at an angle of about 20° (fig. 5). It is thus evident that, due to the correction of the accident on
