Servant statuette

The severely damaged, heavily worn wooden statuette most likely depicts a member of the rowing crew in a wooden model boat coming from an early Middle Kingdom burial. His body, as usual, was originally painted in brick red, his apron in white; and on his head he wears a rich black headdress or possibly a wig covering the ears. Both arms, once attached with dowels, are now missing, and the front part of the block-shaped, apron-covered legs has been broken off. The figure’s occupation is alluded to by the position of his shoulders: the slightly elevated right shoulder suggests that he raised his right arm higher that the left which corresponds to the usual posture of oarsmen taking place on the left side of the boat.
For the ancient Egyptians, the primary means of travel and transport was always by boat, the first model boats, still made of clay, appear as early as in the burials of the predynastic period. Wooden pieces, modelling different types of ships and equipped with a crew became widespread grave goods only later, from the second half of the Old Kingdom onwards. By virtue of the power of magical representation, these models placed inside the tomb allowed the deceased to travel freely: he could cross from the east bank of the Nile (i.e., the land of the living) to the west (i.e. the realm of the dead), make pilgrimages to distant holy places (e.g., Abydos), or traverse the vast watery regions of the sky and the underworld in the company of the gods.