Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This small kneeling male figure was associated with a statuette and base of a winged Isis, 1969.177.15.A-C, when acquired. The kneeling figure holds his arms in front of his torso and bent at the elbows; the left hand slightly higher than the right, and both palms are turned down. He may wear a headpiece, giving his head a bulbous profile in the back, or have a shaven head. Small eyes, nose, and mouth are visible—the ears are disproportionately large, with horizontal lines at the center. The lower legs are clearly shown drawn up under the upper legs. The bottoms of the feet are visible at the back, rendered with a space between them; below the feet and connecting them is a small tang for insertion into a base or mount.
The winged figure may represent Isis as a protective figure; her pose indicates that she would have been part of a group composition, with her arms held out to protect another figure in front of her. Her face is rather crudely modeled with a horizontal slit for the mouth and a flat nose. She wears the sun disc atop double circlets (the “modius crown”) with a vestigial uraeus on the upper circlet. Wings with ambiguous arm-like appendages along the top extend straight out in front, almost perpendicular to the body. Roughly incised feathers mark the outside surfaces; the inner surfaces remain unadorned and probably would have sheltered another figure, such as Osiris or the Apis bull (1). In later periods, Isis was considered the mother of the Apis bull, which after its death became associated with Osiris. Excavated examples of winged goddesses have been found at the Serapeum of Saqqara, the cult center for the Memphite Osiris-Apis (2). The proper left wing is broken at the join with the body. A pair of feet on a square base with peg below had been attached in modern times, but it may not belong to the figure. The metal is yellow, which may indicate that this piece is a modern creation.
Whether or not the kneeling figure and the winged figure belonged together in antiquity, this type of group, with a small adorant kneeling before a much larger deity, and each separately inserted into a single base, is known from several examples (3).
NOTES:
1. Compare a winged Isis in the Musée de Guéret, France, published in M.-D. Quémereuc, Collections Égyptiennes, Musée de Guéret (Guéret, 1992) 34, no. 3; and in G. Roeder, Ägyptische Bronzefiguren, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Mitteilungen aus der Ägyptischen Sammlung 6 (Berlin, 1956) pl. 67; and an example in the Louvre, Paris, with a winged Isis embracing a figure of Osiris, with a small worshipper kneeling in front of them, inv. no. E3722.
2. Roeder 1956 (supra 1) 241.
3. See, for example, B. Mendoza, Bronze Priests of Ancient Egypt from the Middle Kingdom to the Graeco-Roman Period, BAR Int. Ser. 1866 (Oxford, 2008) 148-59, nos. 38 and 40, pls. 57-58. Mendoza includes in the catalogue many adorant figures that have become separated from their group contexts; see ibid., 139-140, 148, and 179, nos. 14-15, 37, and 153, pls. 13, 34, 48, and 73. See also Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Apis no. 16, which includes a winged Isis, Apis, and small kneeling figure.
Marian Feldman and Lisa M. Anderson
