Statuette of a Serving Girl (c. 1323–1186 BCE): Art, History and Details

Statuette of a Serving Girl (c. 1323–1186 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This statuette of a young serving girl carrying a jar belongs to a select group of hand-modeled figurines usually dated to Dynasties 18 and 19. According to the conventions of Egyptian art, the girl's nudity and the sidelock of hair indicate her young age. No more than a dozen of these statuettes are known. Their distinctive features--slit-like eyes, exaggerated hips, triangular delineation of the legs, and finger-depression of the navel--suggest that all were made in the same workshop. Although their exact function remains unknown, it has been suggested that they magically served the deceased as an object in the tomb.

Object facts

• Title: Statuette of a Serving Girl
• Date: c. 1323–1186 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasties 18–19
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: terracotta, originally painted
• Dimensions: Overall: 38.4 x 9.2 cm (15 1/8 x 3 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - New Kingdom
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1991.107

A detail from the museum

This statuette of a serving girl was likely intended to accompany the deceased in the afterlife.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "Selected 1991 Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 2 (1992): 63-83.
• Capel, Anne K., and Glenn Markoe, eds. Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt. New York, NY: Hudson Hills Press, 1996
• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999

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.