Paint Box of Vizier Amenemope (c. 1427–1401 BCE): Art, History and Details

Paint Box of Vizier Amenemope (c. 1427–1401 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This paint box was made in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. It includes five pots of color, each made of different minerals. Conservators identified the pigments using X-ray diffraction, a process that helps them determine the minerals that make up each color. The paint box belonged to a man named Amenemope (say: ah-men-em-oh-pee) who advised the pharaoh (king). He probably used it for fun, and it may have been buried with him when he died. The coffin panel on view nearby was made for a different man named Amenemope hundreds of years later. Imagine you are painting a picture for a king! Which colors would you use? What would you paint?

Object facts

• Title: Paint Box of Vizier Amenemope
• Date: c. 1427–1401 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep II (1425–1400 BCE)
• Type: Tools and Equipment
• Technique: boxwood with inscription inlaid in Egyptian blue
• Dimensions: Overall: 2.2 x 21 x 3.6 cm (7/8 x 8 1/4 x 1 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - New Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1914.680

A detail from the museum

Painting was a popular and time-honored pastime among the upper classes in Egypt.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue of the Inaugural Exhibition, June 6-September 20, 1916. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1916.
• Williams, Caroline Ransom. "The Egyptian Collection in the Museum of Art at Cleveland, Ohio (Continued)." The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 5, no. 4 (1918).
• Rhodes, Lynette I. Science Within Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980.

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.