Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Statuette of a Mother and Son
Middle Kingdom
Not on view
This object is not part of The Met collection. It was in the Museum for a special exhibition and has been returned to the lender.
This statuette depicts an adult woman and a boy, certainly to be understood as a mother and her son. The child’s nudity, distinctive hairstyle, and finger-to-mouth gesture are all common motifs denoting youth in ancient Egyptian art. In the late Middle Kingdom, many ordinary people commissioned simple statuettes of themselves and placed them inside their mortuary chapels. This particular work was recovered from a tomb of an anonymous woman, probably the mother represented here.
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