Caryatid Mirror (c. 1540–1296 BCE): Art, History and Details

Caryatid Mirror (c. 1540–1296 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This superb mirror has an oval disk and a handle in the form of a nubile young girl, entirely naked except for her elaborately braided tripartite wig, broad collar, and a girdle of wallet beads. She stands on a cruciform base, with her left foot slightly advanced and her hands at her sides. On her head and supporting the disk is a papyrus umbel with flaring tips. Mirrors with handles in the form of naked young girls were the height of fashion in mid-Dynasty 18; numerous examples exist. This mirror is perhaps the finest of its kind. The cruciform base is unusual, if not unique. The iconography is understandable in relation to the goddess Hathor, the embodiment of love and beauty. A multifaceted goddess, she was equated with Aphrodite by the Greeks. The retinue of Hathor consisted precisely of such beauties, called nefrut in Egyptian, and the mirror itself, that reflection of beauty, appears to have had Hathorian connections from early times.

Object facts

• Title: Caryatid Mirror
• Date: c. 1540–1296 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18
• Type: Cosmetic Objects
• Technique: bronze with black copper inlay?
• Dimensions: Overall: 38.9 x 20 cm (15 5/16 x 7 7/8 in.); Figure: 16.7 x 4 cm (6 9/16 x 1 9/16 in.); Disk: 16.6 cm (6 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - New Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1983.196

A detail from the museum

When they were made, this mirror was polished to a brilliant shine; the marvelous colored patina it has since acquired is the result of being buried for years in the ground.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "Year in Review for 1983." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 2 (1984).
• Kozloff, Arielle P. "Mirror, Mirror." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 8 (1984).
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Images of the Mind. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1987.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.