Ancient Egypt and Archaeology Web Site

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Painted and plastered limestone statue of a woman, probably from Oxyrhynchus, dating to the 3rd century AD.

This funerary relief belongs to a unique group of approximately twenty monuments almost unknown in museums and private collections before 1969. The sudden appearance of a sizeable corpus of stone sculptures might have raised the suspicion of modern manufacture, save that the type was not "in fashion" at the time the group entered the art market. The sculptures, portraits of both men and women, must have belonged to the same mausoleum in the prosperous, provincial Roman Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus (present-day El-Behnasa, 330 km. south of Alexandria).

Like the other examples of this type, this figure was carved in such high relief as to be almost considered sculpture in the round, and was originally engaged within an architectural niche. Most of these stelae in museum collections are incomplete (some have been sawed into two or more pieces)," having been removed from their sculptural settings for ease of transport by the local inhabitants who discovered them.

The soft and crumbly local limestone required a coating of gesso before the artists could individualize the characteristics of face and costume. Most of the details of portraiture are now lacking due to the loss of the bright colours that would have softened the coarse contours of the bodies, which are often anatomically inaccurately portrayed.

The hair, dress, and jewellery of the unidentified woman' are typical of wealthy matrons of Roman Egypt. Her earrings are of the bar pendant variety, one of three styles that Petrie identified from the mummy portraits he discovered at Hawara.' This three-pearl style usually accompanied "overloaded necklaces"9 and, although changes in earring styles were not strictly chronological, this bar-pendant style is seen on portraits of women into the fourth century AD 11
Although the long, knotted gown has been seen to identify its wearer as a priestess of the goddess Isis," there is no identifying inscription or other evidence. A thick funerary wreath drapes diagonally from the left shoulder, across the torso. It is paralleled by A sash decorated with various crown, star, and moon motifs worn by a headless statue in the Berlin Museum." The men depicted in these stelae usually carry a garland of similar type in one hand (for the significance of funerary wreaths and crowns).

The woman's left arm is crooked at the elbow and her left hand is held close to her body. In her left hand, she holds a vessel, perhaps "a small bowl full of sacred Nile water," although the more common attribute is a container for incense." Her right arm hangs down at her side. Her right hand "may have held a sistrum or rattle"" (of three inscribed Ptolemaic statues of women wearing this tripartite garment, "all three bear the title ihyt, "player of the sistrum"). In other examples, the right hand holds a pellet of incense about to be placed upon an altar."

Oxyrhynchus has provided us with some of the earliest literary evidence for Christianity in Upper Egypt, yet these niched funerary stela with eastern Mediterranean influences.

Source: Mummies and Magic, the Funerary arts of Ancient Egypt; Museum of Fine Arts Boston