Votive Relief of a King (305–246 BCE): Art, History and Details

Votive Relief of a King (305–246 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Trial pieces—carved on limestone flakes, or ostraca—and sculptors' models allow us to see how the ancient Egyptian artist approached his work. Showing the profile of a king in relief, this piece is a masterpiece in its own right, and was probably meant to be copied.

Object facts

• Title: Votive Relief of a King
• Date: 305–246 BCE
• Culture: Egypt, Greco-Roman period (332 BCE–395 CE), Ptolemaic dynasty (305–30 BCE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: limestone
• Dimensions: Overall: 13.6 x 8.9 x 1.8 cm (5 3/8 x 3 1/2 x 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Egypt - Ptolemaic Dynasty
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1914.665

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999
• Cafici, Giorgia. The Egyptian Elite As Roman Citizens: Looking at Ptolemaic Private Portraiture. 2021, 98.

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.