Description
Depicted much as she would have appeared in life, the Chantress Nehy sits on a chair and holds in her left hand the symbol of her profession, a sistrum or rattle used in the worship of the goddess Hathor. Judging from her fine clothing and elegant hairstyle, as well as the scale and quality of her statue, we may assume that Nehy was able to afford a fine burial to ensure her place in the afterlife. Most likely this statue, one of two known, graced a tomb at Saqqara, the ancient necropolis of Memphis.
Provenance
Château des Aygalades, near Marseilles; Jacques Seligmann, Paris, 1917, by purchase [from an unnamed Marseilles dealer]; Henri Daguerre and Joseph Brummer, between 1917 and 1921, by joint purchase; [Judge Samuel Untermeyer, New York, 1922, by purchase]; Joseph Brummer, Paris and New York, Brummer inv. no. X94, sold to Walters 14 May 1924 [as "belonging to Daguerre"]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1924, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
-Updated Oct. 2018.
Inscriptions
[Translation] Inscribed down front of skirt: Everything which goes forth before the lords of the necropolis: bread, beer, oxen and fowl, wine, incense, libation-water and all good and pure things for the Ka of the Osiris, the Mistress of the House, the Chantress of the Mistress of Heaven, She of the Southern Sycamore (Hathor), Nehy, True of Voice.
Credit
Acquired by Henry Walters, 1924
