This delicate ivory gazelle stands on a wooden pedestal with inlaid decoration depicting plants that allude to its semi-desert habitat. The gazelle has its head erect and appears alert, as though sensing danger. Egyptian artists were keen observers of the world and produced many naturalistic images of the creatures around them. The gazelle's ears have broken off and the horns, made separately and probably of another material, are missing.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Gazelle
Period:New Kingdom
Dynasty:Dynasty 18
Reign:reign of Amenhotep III
Date:ca. 1390–1352 B.C.
Geography:From Egypt
Medium:Ivory (elephant), wood, blue-pigment inlay
Dimensions:H. 11.6 × W. 9.7 × D. 5 cm (4 9/16 × 3 13/16 × 1 15/16 in.)
Credit Line:Purchase, Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1926
Accession Number:26.7.1292
Acquired by Lord Carnarvon (d. 1923) . Carnarvon Collection. Collection acquired by the Museum from Lady Carnarvon 1926.
Goldscheider, Ludwig 1937. Art without Epoch. New York: Oxford University Press, fig. 10.
Phillips, Dorothy W. 1942. Ancient Egyptian Animals, Picture Books (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, fig. 13.
Steindorff, Georg 1945. Egypt. New York: J. J. Augustin, p. 117.
Aldred, Cyril 1951. New Kingdom Art in Ancient Egypt (London, 1951). London, 72, plate 98.
Posener, Georges 1959. Dictionnaire de la civilisation égyptienne. Paris: F. Hazan, p. 83.
Hayes, William C. 1959. Scepter of Egypt II: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Hyksos Period and the New Kingdom (1675-1080 B.C.). Cambridge, Mass.: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 314, fig. 196.
Lilyquist, Christine, Peter F. Dorman, and Edna R. Russmann 1983. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 41, no. 3 (Winter), New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 38, fig. 38 (PD).
Dorman, Peter F., Prudence Harper, and Holly Pittman 1987. Egypt and the Ancient Near East. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 63.
Kozloff, Arielle P., Betsy Bryan, and Lawrence Michael Berman 1992. Egypt's Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and his World. Cleveland: Indiana University Press, fig. 114a, p. 427.
Arnold, Dorothea 1995. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, new ser., vol. 52, no. 4 (Spring), New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 10–11, no. 3.
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The Met's collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 26,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from the Paleolithic to the Roman period.
