Ostracon with a Drawing of a King
New Kingdom, mid-Dynasty 19–Dynasty 20, about 1213–1069 BCE
- Medium
- Limestone and pigment
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 24.1 × 15.2 × 3.2 cm (9 1/2 × 6 × 1 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Egypt
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Africa
- Credit line
- Museum Purchase Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Egyptian artists often made sketches on flakes of limestone, called ostraca. This example shows how the preliminary outline was done in red pigment, then corrected, and finished in black. Often these sketches were the work of two craftsmen, a draftsman and a master artist. This ostracon shows a king wearing a crown with streamers and a pleated kilt. He leans on a standard topped with the ram-headed emblem of the god Amun.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
