The plaque of limestone features finely carved low relief on its carefully smoothed front. The sides are smoothed as well whereas the back is left rough.
The plaque’s front shows the profile and the shoulders of a king oriented towards the right. He wears the Red Crown, which is characterized by a high, elongated protrusion at the rear, and a wire-like applique protruding from the crown’s top and ending in a spiral. In addition, the king sports a meticulously detailed ceremonial beard, affixed to his chin through a band passing before his ear toward the temple. Apart from the crown, the beard and the cosmetic lines marking the eyebrow and the prolongation of eyelids, the carving presents the king as unadorned and bare-chested. Details of clothing may once have been indicated through paint, but no visible traces remain. The two most salient stylistic features of the royal portrait are the prominent, slightly arced nose, and the careful indication of vertical striation on the Red Crown.
The plaque has posed many problems regarding its date, function and even its authenticity, with the result that it was taken from display in the 1980s together with its counterpart,
11.150.31. Only through the recent discovery of archaeologically contextualized reliefs exhibiting a similar style and iconography has it been possible to substantiate the artifact’s authenticity and arrive at a likely date in the Eighth Century B.C.
When the piece was acquired together with 11.150.31 from the Egyptian art dealer N. Tano in 1911, H. E. Winlock characterized its stylistic traits as typical of the 3rd and early 4th Dynasties (ca. 2680–2550 B.C.). He regarded the plaque as representing a trial piece or sculptor’s model dating from that time, but also considered the possibility that both 11.150.30 and 11.150.31 were faithful copies of an original from the early Old Kingdom produced in a subsequent period (Winlock 1917, pp. 66–67). After its initial publication in 1917 other Egyptologists commented on the plaque and expressed their belief that it was indeed an original from the 3rd Dynasty. Apparent stylistic similarities with the reliefs in the subterranean chambers of the pyramid complex of King Djoser at Saqqara further strengthened the association with that ruler. It is therefore little wonder that W. C. Hayes presented 11.150.30 and 11.150.31 in the first volume of his popular annotated catalogue
Scepter of Egypt of 1953 as two originals from the 3rd Dynasty and regarded the identification of the king depicted on 11.150.30 with Djoser himself as "almost certain."
In subsequent decades, however, doubts arose in respect to the proposed dating for several reasons. First, no comparable trial pieces from the Old Kingdom had ever come to light. It was also realized that several stylistic and—for 11.150.31—paleographic features were rather odd and appeared to be isolated among the corpus of ancient Egyptian sculpture. On the other hand, the two plaques had very little in common with the known types of sculptor’s models/votives of the Late and Ptolemaic Periods (see e.g. the plaque
07.228.7). As no satisfactory solutions could be offered, the logical consequence was to put the very authenticity of 11.150.30 and 11.150.31 into question. Once they were deemed potential forgeries, they were removed from display to await further investigation.
A tentative attempt at rehabilitation was made already in 2001 (considering, among other things, the date of discovery of the relief panels in the Djoser complex, and the closely related "sculptor’s model" Cairo TR 30.9.23.2), but it was not until recently that more substantial arguments in favor of the plaques’ authenticity could be formulated. These new insights related to discoveries of a French archaeological expedition at the site of Tanis in the Eastern Delta. In 2012 the mission, led by P. Brissaud, found finely carved blocks of relief that must have originated from a dismantled temple building associated with Osorkon IV and potentially other rulers of the Lower Egyptian 23rd Dynasty (around the middle of the Eighth Century B.C.). The uncovered reliefs show so many iconographic, stylistic, technical and paleographic similarities with the two pieces in the Metropolitan Museum that a chronological, and possibly also geographical, proximity seems a reasonable assumption.
This by no means contradicts earlier assessments of 11.150.30 by Winlock and others, who stressed that it resembled monuments dating from the early Old Kingdom. In fact, we now know that the late Ninth and Eight Centuries B.C. (the late Third Intermediate Period) saw the rise of a momentous cultural phenomenon conventionally referred to as "Late Period archaism." While a selective and creative re-interpretation of models from different chronological strata is characteristic of almost every period of Pharaonic art, the energy put into emulating "archaic" cultural traits and the scope of engagement with the more distant past (not exclusively the Old Kingdom!) is hardly matched in earlier periods. With the aim of recreating the semblance of "ancientness" not only in content (which would be easily transferable via templates on papyrus or ostraca), but also in style and technique of carving, the craftsmen of the late Third Intermediate Period were in need of reliable reference models in 3D. Where the close personal examination of ancient prototypes was not possible or was not deemed feasible, the production of easily transportable sculptor’s models created by a master artisan could have provided a handy alternative. Of course, there is no definite proof that 11.150.30 and 11.150.31 were ever used for that specific purpose, but the presence of grids painted over finished reliefs of the 3rd Dynasty, which were most likely created during the First Millennium B.C. in order to facilitate faithful copying, at least demonstrates that there was a strong desire to engage with monuments of old as directly as possible. Such an interpretation does not preclude the possibility that the "sculptor’s model" was later deposited in a ritual context. Since it had been aiding the creation of royal/religious imagery it might have been associated with some level of "sacredness."
Claus Jurman, University of Vienna, Department of Egyptology 2021
ReferencesH. E. Winlock, 1917. "Bas-Reliefs from the Egyptian Delta,"
BMMA 12/3, pp. 64–67 w. fig.
W. M. F. Petrie, 1917. "Review of ‘Bas-Reliefs from the Egyptian Delta,"
Ancient Egypt 4, p. 170.
L. Borchardt, 1928. "Ein Bildhauermodell aus dem frühen Alten Reich,"
ASAE 28, pp. 43–50.
W. C. Hayes, 1953.
The Scepter of Egypt, vol. I, pp. 59–61 w. fig. 38.
P. Brissaud, 2018.
Tanis : le domaine de la déesse Mout et son lac sacré.
