Seated Statue of Nykara (2408–2377 BCE): Art, History and Details

Seated Statue of Nykara (2408–2377 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This statue inscribed on the base for the chief of the granary, Nykara, comes from the same tomb as the false door. A statue of granite was an expensive commodity. Monumental red granite was quarried at Aswan in the south of Egypt and had to be shipped more than five hundred miles downstream to Nykara's tomb in the area of Memphis.

Object facts

• Title: Seated Statue of Nykara
• Date: 2408–2377 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, Old Kingdom (2647–2124 BCE), Dynasty 5, reign of Nyuserre (2445–2422 BCE) or later
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: red granite and pigment
• Dimensions: Overall: 53.4 x 20.5 x 28 cm (21 x 8 1/16 x 11 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - Old Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1964.90

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

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.