Ancient Egyptian Models

[minoanmiss]

https://egypt-museum.com/models-in-ancient-egypt/

I find these so charming. I love miniatures, and I love the way these little sculptures show Egyptian artistic skill in a way more formal sculpture and more convention bound painting don't always reveal to the modern eye.

Just something cute from the Ancient World [tm].

A heck of a lot of these examples are in the British Museum but that's a slightly different discussion.

Comments

[dissectionist]

These are adorable!

[acelightning73]

I used to sometimes build these in order to be able to visualize a particular way to arrange things. In grade school we sometimes built "dioramas" to illustrate some moment of history. These.... "it looks like a room in a house, so I know how big these people were. I can imagine people in this dollhouse room, just doing everyday people stuff. "

[beradan]

Playmobil has a couple of Egyptian figure sets, but I think there's an untapped market for the little dioramas.

[amaebi]

I have such complicated feelings about these.

First, simple and uncomplicated love of the objects as art, as craft, as observations, as historical documents. I love the care and the attention.

But that these are Egyptian grave goods means that all the love embedded in those sculptures is in a folder marked His/Her Possessions was in the service of possessing entities like these-- whether independent living beings or golems of such-- as eternal servitors and accessories. And that they are now in western museums folds that into yet another folder of possession, of the history of that whole civilization as well as of their former troubling understanding of possession....

[minoanmiss]

contemplates

I have seen people express this concept concerning Native American grave goods but it applies no less to the Ancient Egyptians just because their descendents follow different religions than they did.

contemplates more

[amaebi]

Love and possession do this strange tango through the centuries.

[asakiyume]

Those really are wonderful! I know it's not their purpose, but they would make *great* kids' toys (... or grown-ups' toys)

[amaebi]

There's just one sentence, I think, in Diana Eck's Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, in which she mentions an Indian temple one of whose priests' duties is playing with god's toys.

That sentence has ravished me for almost 30 years now.

[asakiyume]

It is ravishing! May all of us be priests in that respect, at least to some degree.

[amaebi]

Amen.