Hand Mirror (New Kingdom, Dynasty 18 (about 1550–1295 BCE)): Artwork and History

Hand Mirror (New Kingdom, Dynasty 18 (about 1550–1295 BCE)) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Egyptian.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The round disk of this hand mirror was originally polished to a reflective sheen. The elegant shape of the handle references papyrus plants that grew in Egypt’s marshy regions. Together, the handle and disk evoke an image of the sun rising from a papyrus umbel (flower cluster), a symbol of the sun’s daily regeneration. The ancient Egyptian words for mirror and life are homonyms, so this object’s shape also playfully refers to the ankh hieroglyph used to write both words.

Object facts

• Title: Hand Mirror
• Date: New Kingdom, Dynasty 18 (about 1550–1295 BCE)
• Artist attribution: Egyptian
• Place of origin: Egypt
• Medium: Copper alloy
• Dimensions: 20 × 10.3 × 2.2 cm (7 7/8 × 4 1/16 × 7/8 in.)
• Type: Sculpture
• Department: Arts of Africa
• Reference number: 1894.725

Collection credit

Gift of Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.