The sculpture has several inlays, highlighting those of the eyes-made of polished quartz framed in copper-and the two nipples, made of wood. The posture is typical of a scribe: Seated and cross-legged. The seated scribe in the Louvre is a piece of exceptional realism despite its small size the original polychrome is practically intact.īefore painting it, the piece was first covered with a thin layer of plaster. This would have contributed to his right to have a tomb and receive offerings, as well as the cult statue that represents him proudly performing his tasks for all eternity. However, although we do not know who this small sculpture represents, it is clear that its owner must have held a position of high importance in the pharaonic administration. ![]() It was created sometime between the Fourth (2543–2436 BC) and Fifth (2435–2306 BC) dynasties, but we do not know the name of the owner of the tomb in which it appeared, or who it represents. There is much we do not know about this statue, but what we do know is that the Egyptologist took the statue of the scribe to Paris, where it became part of the Egyptian collection at the Louvre Museum. This 53-centimeter-high limestone sculpture was discovered during excavations carried out by Mariette’s team at the Saqqara necropolis, about twenty kilometers from Cairo, in 1850. We are talking about one of the most famous sculptures of ancient Egypt: The seated scribe, which today is exhibited in the Parisian Louvre Museum. Perhaps he was glad to see the light of Ra again after so many millennia hidden in the darkness of a tomb… Who was this scribe? On his clean-shaven face, his thin lips pressed together into a half smile. ![]() ![]() The ancient scribe stared at him with his rock-crystal blue eyes, which had watched impassively on over the centuries. “My God, he seems to be alive!” the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, Frenchman Auguste Mariette, must have thought when he came face to face with the statue of a seated man dressed in a short skirt and holding a scroll of papyrus on his lap. It was discovered under mysterious circumstances by Auguste Mariette in 1850. This small, realistic limestone statue is over 4,000 years old and depicts an Egyptian scribe about to write on a sheet of papyrus.
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