Originality is also a basic requirement we expect from an artist and we can see in the following examples that this characteristic is also present from time to time. In each of these instances the artist has taken a common form and given it an original twist that one is unlikely to find elsewhere.
He seated person hieroglyph (U) in a title for a nomarch was in a single instance converted into a ruler icon22 and it is also a new sign (Fig. 2.6). In all likelihood, it was probably meant to depict the Great Overlord of the Province, fienem-nehwet (the actual governor of the nome of Akhmim), upon whose coffin this sign appears. Here the artist has either lattered his patron by giving the determinative the symbols (the heqa staff and the lail of a king, together with a diadem) that such a governor should not by rights possess, or else, he has given a visual rendering of the actual items this governor may have used. 5uch a depiction is something that we could expect from the First Intermediate Period, rather than the Old Kingdom, of course, and this is of some assistance when trying to date the object on which such signs appear.
He third example is the common quail chick hieroglyph , but this little chick has been given feathers and is no more a pink and blue little bird struggling to survive (Fig. 2.7). In this particular instance, the chick has a knowing eye and a substantial covering of feathers — something that scribes from other places have never even thought of doing — and the whimsical thought is that he would not be so defenceless and vulnerable in the world of the Afterlife for which he was intended.