It is possible that the seated figures depicted in the house of Djehutynakht are statues of the owner. Such figures could have been carved from wood627 or even fashioned from clay: fragmentary clay/mud statues have survived in shrines and tombs at Deir el-Medina.628 Four fragments of statuary were unearthed in domestic contexts at Kom Rabi’a; they had perhaps been smashed to recover reusable stone.629 Stone fragments in house N.50.30 at Amarna may have derived from a statue that suffered the same fate.630
At least one statuette explicitly dedicated to an ancestor is known. The unprovenanced wooden standing male figure wears a short kilt and is identified as the akh iqer Ba’aref.631 It is similar in type to other uninscribed, unprovenanced New Kingdom figures which might also represent the potent dead and have been set up in tomb chapels and houses as objects of veneration. A limestone statuette of a man in a typical akh iqer pose, seated in a high-backed chair and holding the stem of a lotus bud at the centre of his chest with the bud itself resting on his left shoulder, was found in the most south-easterly room in house T.35.4 at Amarna may be an example of an uninscribed ancestral figure.632 Other examples include a pre-Amarna-style uninscribed limestone statuette of a seated man holding the stem of a water lily, from the northern buildings at Amarna,633 and a wooden statuette of a striding man also holding a water lily stem surmounted by a bud, now in Turin.634 It seems unlikely that such sculptures were isolated examples, and Schulman pointed to several other examples of figures holding lilies that may also have derived from domestic contexts635 (Figure 25).
World History
