Two Clay Female Figurines in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

The paper continues a series of publications of female nude figurines from the Ancient Egyptian collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. It deals with two unusual handmade clay figurines of the late Middle Kingdom and the early New Kingdom (I, 1a 5889, I, 1a 7076) which are examined in the context of other figurines of this type. Their iconography is characterized by a disproportionate head with discoid headdress, broad shoulders, small breasts, arms stretched along body, slim waist, broad hips, marked enlarged pubic triangle, navel, dimples above the buttocks, prominent rounded buttocks, long legs, poorly developed hand and feet. The face has generalized features: large carelessly drawn eyes without pupils, a protruding beak-shaped nose, pierced ears. Special attention is paid to hairstyles and jewelry. The headdress consists of a a convex disk pierced with three to six holes which likely held linen threads imitating hair with clay, mud, faience beads, shells. As for the jewelry, the figurines usually depicted: a ribbon/fillet on the forehead surrounding a convex disk, incised girdles, incised bracelets on the hands, incised body chains, one-, two-and less often three-partite modelled necklaces with or without patterns, incised necklaces of one or more rows of dots, rarely earrings in the ears. The article considers the issues of the figurines origin and the influence of Nubian and Middle Eastern cultures on their emergence. The authors conclude that despite the possible impact of other cultures the clay figurines in question were centrally produced in the Nile Valley and were close in their iconography and meaning to other female images of Ancient Egypt.