AN EGYPTIAN GREYWACKE HEAD OF A PRIEST

The 26th Dynasty had their capital in the city of Sais in the Nile Delta, and the so-called Saite period was of relative stability and prosperity for Egypt. The artistic output is generally characterised by archaising tendencies which consciously draw inspiration from previous dynasties in order to link their rule to the past, in particular to Thebes in Upper Egypt during the the Middle Kingdom. But instead of creating sculptures for the tomb, Saites filled their temples with statues to be seen by worshippers. The traditional canons of proportion are applied on a more realistic style of portraiture: they evolved from idealized to more personal features which allowed human representations to be filled with character and inner life, like in this very fine example.

Another example of shaven egg-head type ‘curiously compressed at the temples’ and with eyebrows which ‘consist of narrow plastic bands, which for two-thirds of their length are quite straight, then make a downward bend and rapidly taper to a point’ for Pa-debehu, dating from the second half of the 26th Dynasty in the Brooklyn Museum, cf. E. Riefstahl (ed.), Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period 700 B.C. to A.D. 100, New York, 1960, p. 65, no. 56, fig. 131.