Gianluca Miniaci, Research Fellow, British Museum
Faience hippopotamus found in tomb 477 at Matmar. (EA 63713)
The British Museum has a fine collection of faience figurines made during the late Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period (c. 1800–1550 BC). I have recently completed a three-month post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, during which time I studied and documented a total of 82 examples. Most of these glazed statuettes represent animals such as hippopotami, lions, crocodiles, baboons, cats, dogs and even hedgehogs. The corpus also includes humans, most notably dwarves and female fertility figures. Images of the deities Aha and Ipy are part animal, part human. Some of the objects are non-figurative and represent food offerings such as fruit and vegetables, as well as jars, cups and bowls.
Faience figurine of a lion attacking a calf. This is one of the items purchased by the British Museum in 1891. (EA 22876)
Some 35% of the British Museum material comes from documented excavations, including sites such as Serabit el-Khadim, Tell el-Yahudiya, Matarya, Asyut, Matmar, Mostagedda, Abydos, and Thebes. Most pieces are from funerary contexts, where they would have been found in or near the coffin or just outside the burial chamber. Fourteen figurines, purchased from various collectors and dealers in 1891, may have been found at a site in the north of Egypt. They closely parallel examples from the elite cemeteries of Lisht, Lahun and Harageh.
Two faience figurines from Petrie’s tomb G62 at Abydos: a female dwarf and the god Aha. (EA 37298 and EA 37297)
Most interesting of all is a group of six pieces representing Aha, Ipy, a female dwarf, an antelope (?) and two model vessels. They are recorded as finds from tomb G62 in Abydos, excavated by Flinders Petrie in 1902. He discovered the burial with much of its content intact, all now in the British Museum, and I have been kindly granted permission to publish the entire group. Beside the faience objects, it includes pairs of ivory wands, a bronze mirror, a wooden fish, a silver torque, gold and silver rings, alabaster vessels, a copper bowl, various amulets, and many stone and faience beads.
Part of my research aims to clarify why the figurines were included in burials and determine what they symbolise. It is clear that many were apotropaic, intended to ward off evil. Statuettes like these have often been found together alongside other objects with apotropaic imagery, including magic rods and wands, and feeding cups. These other objects display a much broader range of creatures but include images of hippopotami, lions, crocodiles, baboons, cats, dogs, and of Aha and Ipy. Inscriptions indicate that the wands had to protect pregnant women and infants, but by extension they probably also served to protect people reborn into the afterlife. All new-borns and those newly born were vulnerable to destructive forces, so they needed magical protection. It is fortunate that these ancient beliefs have left us with such a wealth of charming statuettes!
Video production by Claudio Benedetti and Anna Giulia De Marco, Laboratorio di cultura Digitale Università di Pisa
