Title: calcite statuette
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual A
Description: Calcite statuette. The statuette has no distinct limbs or other bodily features but the narrowing of the shape implies the narrow waist and broad hips of a woman. The head of the statuette has small protruding ears and a pointed chin; the mouth is shown by a single incised line and the eyes are hollowed out and inlaid with a green stone, surrounded by black pigment.
Title: granite head of a woman
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Vi
Description: Granite head of a woman, broken from a larger statue at the neck. The woman wears a tripartite wig of plaited hair crowned by a modius with uraeus. The woman has curved eyebrows, wide-set almond-shaped eyes and a slightly smiling mouth. The top of the back pillar can be seen at the back of the head. The nose of the woman and the uraeus are missing and the head is slightly eroded with a pitted surface.
Title: black-topped beaker
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual
Description: Black-topped Nile silt ware beaker, constructed using the coil method and smoothed by hand. The distinctive red colour of the lower part of the exterior is due to a red iron oxide wash being applied to the beaker and then burnished. The upper part of the exterior and the interior of the beaker were blackened during the firing process.
Title: statuette of Thoth
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual
Description: Turquoise and brown mottled faience amuletic statuette of the ibis-headed god Thoth.
Thoth wears a tripartite wig, wesekh collar and pleated shendyt kilt and stands with his arms held by his sides, hands clenched and left leg forward. The statuette has an uninscribed back pillar. The feet are missing.
Title: scribal palette
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art
Description: Scribe's palette made from wood.
The palette is long and rectangular and has a long groove hollowed out of the upper surface for holding rush pens. The pen section would have covered by a sliding lid, which is missing. There are two small circular wells carved at the other end of the palette; the top well is full of black pigment and the lower well shows traces of red pigment. The lower well is encircled by an incised shen-symbol and it can be assumed that the top well is
Title: papyrus
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
Description: A section of text from the Book of the Dead.
The text is written in black and red ink on a sheet of papyrus, with red ink used to emphasise the beginning of sections and individual words. There are 10 horizontal lines of hieratic text, read from right to left.
The manuscript is fragile and has been repaired.
Title: Coptic manuscript
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual A
Description: A page from a Coptic text of the Song of Moses, Exodus 15. The manuscript has a decorative chapter heading and initial letter. There are 18 horizontal lines of Coptic text, read from left to right. Above and to the right hand side of the Coptic text is a translation in 19 lines of Arabic.
The manuscript has a split where it has previously been folded in half and there is some slight discolouration.
Title: terracotta frog lamp
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visua
Description: Decorated oval lamp made of terracotta. On the upper side of the lamp is a frog facing to the front, with tail curled behind him. There is a rimless hole is the middle of the frog's back and a rimmed hole at the front of the lamp. There are eight circles in front and four circles to each side of the frog. Surrounding the frog is a floral border and a raised inscription in Greek. The underside is smooth and has a flat base.
There are black markings from the front, rimmed s
Title: funerary stela of Hapy
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Vis
Description: Round-topped funerary stela.
There is a winged sun-disk across the top of the lunette, below which are three water lines and basket, with a recumbent jackal on either side with a kherep-sceptre held in their front paws.
On the left hand side of the upper register, Isis is seated on a block throne on a dais, wearing the vulture headdress with horned sun-disk and a red dress and holding a was-sceptre and ankh-symbol. There is a table of offerings before her, with a large
Title: funerary stela of Nesy-wer
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for
Description: Round-topped funerary stela.
In the lunette, there is a winged sun-disk with three columns of inscription (offering formula) directly underneath. On the left hand side of the stela, there is the hawk-headed Re-Harakhty, depicted mummiform with sun-disk and uraeus on his head, holding a was-sceptre and standing on a dais. An offering table stands before him. On the right hand side is a female, Nesy-wer, wearing a short wig, necklace and long see-through gown, one hand rais
Title: funerary stela
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
Description: Round-topped funerary stela, crudely carved in raised relief.
In the lunette, which is not distinguished from upper register, there are two udjat-eyes on either side of a shen-symbol. On the left hand side of the upper register is a scene of a couple seated before an offering table. The woman is wearing a long wig and tight sheath dress with a strap over the left shoulder and the man is depicted wearing a broad collar and long kilt, sniffing a lotus. On the right hand sid
Title: stela depicting Harpocrates and Sakhmet
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbu
Description: Round-topped stela in very good quality raised relief with Harpocrates (see notes) in the centre striding right, holding a staff with a ?gazelle head in his left hand and an ankh-symbol in his right hand. He wears a costume of near eastern origin with two sashes crossing over at the front and a long tail of hair from the crown of the head to the ground behind him. There is a ureaus on the front. Behind Harpocrates on the left hand side is Sakhmet as a lion-headed woman crown
Title: funerary stela of Tasheritbastet
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Cent
Description: Round-topped funerary stela, with lunette and two registers.
There is a winged sun-disk across the top of the lunette, with two pendant uraei and an inscription between and on the right hand side. There is a sky-symbol above a scene depicted on the upper register. The scene depicts a female, Tasheritbastet, standing on the right hand side, wearing a long wig and fringed dress, adoring Osiris standing on a pedestal. Osiris is depicted mummiform, wearing the atef-crown, hol
Title: funerary stela of the physician Hormes
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbur
Description: Round-topped funerary stela, with two registers.
On the upper register, there is a scene depicting the physician Hormes and his wife ?Sebekh-ab standing before an offering table, adoring Osiris. Osiris is depicted as a mummiform man wearing the atef-crown and holding a heqa-crook and flail. There are seven columns of hieroglyphs above the heads of Hormes and ?Sebekh-ab. On the lower register, there is a scene depicting one man and three women with incense cones and lotuse
Title: funerary stela of Mes, Overseer of Goldsmiths
VADS Collection: Artworld: S
Description: Round-topped funerary stela, with three registers.
In the upper register is a representation of a man, Mes, with both hands raised in adoration to Osiris who is seated on a throne on the left hand side of the stela. Osiris is depicted as a mummiform man, wearing a beard and the atef-crown and holding the crook in his left hand and the flail in his right. Before Osiris is a laden offering table with two jars underneath. Mes wears a short curly wig and a long translucent ga
Title: funerary stela of Shemrai
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for
Description: Round-topped funerary stela.
The lunette has two udjat-eyes with a shen-symbol between. Below the lunette are three rows of hieroglyphs.
Hotep-di-nesw offering formula to Osiris for Shemrai, an architect.
There is a large standing figure of Shemrai on the left, with cropped hair and wearing a wesekh collar and short kilt. There is a small scene to the right in which the small figure of his son Senenu similarly dressed and standing before an offering table, doing the
Title: limestone relief of soldiers
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre f
Description: Part of a painted limestone relief of a procession of Nubian soldiers running by the river, in six large fragments cemented together.
There is a band of wavy lines bearing traces of blue paint representing water across the top of the relief. Below are 11 soldiers shown from the head to the waist, each wearing a short curly wig and a kilt, carrying weapons (such as scimitars, spears and axes), shields and standards. The flesh of the soldiers is painted red. There is a row
Title: commemorative stela of the nomarch Khenty-khet-wer
VADS Collection: Artwor
Description: Round-topped commemorative stela, recording the successful return of troops from Punt (Arabia) under the nomarch Khenty-khet-wer.
There is a curved sky-symbol across the top of the lunette, below which is a representation of Min of Coptos giving life to Amenemhat II. Min is depicted as ithyphallic man wearing a headdress of two tall feathers and holding a flail high in his right hand. Amenemhat is depicted wearing a nemes headdress with uraeus and a shendyt kilt, holding
Title: funerary stela
VADS Collection: Artworld: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
Description: Round-topped funerary stela.
There are two udjat-eyes at the top of the stela, with five columns of hieroglyphs (facing to the right) below, hotep-di-nesw offering formula to Geb and Osiris for the prince, Overseer of the Priests, Amenemhat son of Set and Iremhi.
Amenemhat is represented seated before an offering table. Eight members of his family are depicted facing him, two rows of three kneeling and his son and brother standing with right arms extended, his brother
