Once Again to the Dating of the Portrait of the Egyptian Queen in the Collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (I,1a 5355)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the controversial dating of the sculptural portrait of the anonymous queen, originating from the former collection of V.S. Golenischeff (The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Inv. no. I, 1a 5355). B.A. Turaeff and later V.V. Pavlov dated the portrait of a queen to the Libyan or the Kushite Period (XXII and XXV Dynasties respectively) as being close to statues of Karomama and Takushit’s type. V.V. Pavlov inclined to date the Moscow portrait to the XXV Dynasty. The supposed dating of the portrait to the XXII–XXV Dynasties remained accepted until the publication in 2004 of a new catalogue of Egyptian sculpture in the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. In the short article related to the portrait, O.D. Berlev dated it to the Amarna period and regarded it as the depiction of Nefertiti. The author of the present study considers this attribution as improbable. A thorough comparative analysis based on iconographic and stylistic peculiarities of the portrait of the anonymous queen led to the conclusion that the previous dating to the later date is preferable. For the revised dating of the portrait, other images of the Kushite Period (XXV Dynasty) are drawn – notably, the reliefs of Shepenwepet I and Amenirdis I in the sanctuary of Osiris-kheka-djet at Karnak and a copper figurine of a woman from the Fitzwilliam Museum (Inv. E.GA.4378.1943). Moreover, the closest parallel to the Moscow portrait is found – this is previously unpublished sculptural representation of an anonymous queen from the collection of the August Kestner Museum in Hanover (Inv. 1935.200.122).