Seated Scribe of Medthu (c. 1479–1425 BCE): Art, History and Details

Seated Scribe of Medthu (c. 1479–1425 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Medthu, the overseer of the two granaries and scribe of accounts of the fields of Amen, sits cross-legged on the ground in the traditional pose of a scribe. His striated, bell-shaped wig, the stripes of which run parallel to his forehead, completely reveals his ears and passes behind his shoulders. His short, belted kilt is stretched tight to support he papyrus that is partly unrolled across his lap. He holds the rolled-up portion with his left hand, and his right hand rests flat on the papyrus, which curls around his right thigh. The papyrus is inscribed in sunk relief with seven columns of hieroglyphs that face the scribe. The Middle Kingdom type of wig helps date the statue more closely to the earlier part of Dynasty 18, around the time of Tuthmosis III. Later in Dynasty 18 the coiffure was fashionably updated.

Object facts

• Title: Seated Scribe of Medthu
• Date: c. 1479–1425 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18, reign of Tuthmosis III (1479–1425 BCE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: limestone, originally painted
• Dimensions: Overall: 30.5 x 18.9 x 24.1 cm (12 x 7 7/16 x 9 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - New Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1920.2004

A detail from the museum

The scribe statue has a long and distinguished history, having first appeared in Dynasty 4 (c. 2613 to 2494 BC).

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Gabriel P. Weisberg, and H. W. Janson. Traditions and Revisions: Themes from the History of Sculpture. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.
• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999
• Vandenbeusch, Marie, Aude Semat, and Margaret Maitland. Pharaoh: King of Ancient Egypt. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art ; London : The British Museum, 2016.

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.