AN EGYPTIAN INDURATED LIMESTONE FIGURE OF THE SCRIBE NEKHT-ANKH, LATE 12TH/13TH DYNASTY, CIRCA 1800-1700 B.C. | An Egyptian Indurated Limestone Figure of the Scribe Nekht-ankh

seated with his legs crossed on a high rectangular base with wide back pillar, his left hand resting on his chest, a bolt of cloth in his right hand, and wearing an enveloping cloak and wide wig with pointed lappets, his face with full broad mouth, aquiline nose, and wide-set eyes, two lines of inscription on the front of the base translating “An invocation of the offering for the guest of Thoth, Lord of Khemenu (Hermopolis), the Scribe of the Temple Nekht-Ankh, whom F[...] bore.”

Paul Philip, Cairo, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Antiquités égyptiennes, grecques et romaines appartenant à P. Philip et à divers amateurs: sculptures, peintures, bronzes, étoffes, faïences, figures de Tanagra, verres irisés, April 10th-12th, 1905, no. 52, illus.
Adolphe Stoclet (1871-1949), Brussels
by descent to the present owners

Henri Frankfort, "Egyptische Beeldhouwwerken uit de verzameling A. Stoclet te Brussel," in Maandblad voor Beeldende Kunsten, vol. vii [3], March 1930, p. 76, fig. 9
Jaromir Malek et al., eds., Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Statues, Reliefs and Paintings, vol. VIII, Oxford, 1999, no. 801-436-450 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/s10.html)

Cyril Aldred’s comments on the 8-inch high granite statuette of Kheti in Cairo could easily apply to the present example: “Kheti is clothed in a long cloak, which he holds around him and which reduces the form of his body to a conoid mass (...). The whole statuette has a monumental unity out of proportion to its modest dimensions” (Middle Kingdom Art in Ancient Egypt, 2300-1590 B.C., 1950, p. 43). For the gesture of the left hand resting against the chest and the right hand clasping the hem of the garment see the statue of Rehuankh in the British Museum:     A. Oppenheimer, Dor. Arnold, Diet. Arnold, and K. Yamamoto, eds., Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, 2015, no. 65; the author notes that “his reverent pose and distant gaze suggest an individual witnessing a sacred rite, as would be appropriate for a figure standing in a chapel or temple.”

Also from the Stoclet Collection is a Middle Kingdom seated statue of a Vizier now in the Saint Louis Museum of Art: see Frankfort, op. cit., p. 77, and http://emuseum.slam.org/objects/48420/seated-vizier.