Reserve head (KHM 7787)

Reserve head (KHM 7787)

material	limestone
Dimensions	H. 27.7 cm; W. 17.3 cm; T. 24.5 cm;
origin	Giza , Necropolis , Mastaba G 4350
time	Old Kingdom , probably in the middle of the 4th Dynasty , around 2550 BC Chr.
place	Vienna , Kunsthistorisches Museum , KHM 7787

This reserve head , which is now in the Egyptian-Oriental Collection of the Art History Museum in Vienna (inventory number 7787), is one of the most beautiful of the more than thirty life-size heads from ancient Egypt . They are predominantly referred to as a replacement head , alternatively as a portrait or reserve head and were made as heads from the start, and are therefore not fragments of statues. Its exact function is still unclear today. More than twenty such replacement heads, like the Viennese head, were found in Gizeh . Like most of them, it dates to the time of the kings ( pharaohs ) Cheops and Chephren , i.e. to the middle of the 4th dynasty (around 2550 BC).

The reserve heads were kept in a niche between the vertical shaft and the coffin chamber of the mastabas .

During this time, probably the cult of the dead in the private sector was banned, because it lacks in private tombs ( mastabas ) reliefs , inscriptions, false doors and serdabs , enclosed spaces behind the false door in which the Ka - statues of the deceased were kept. Instead, the reserve heads were at the foot of the vertical grave shaft, in a niche in the wall that separates the burial chamber from the shaft. This means that these heads did not have the function of a cult statue, like the Ka statues, which made it possible to receive the victims. Due to their unique characteristic features, their function is interpreted to mean “to preserve the individuality and appearance of the deceased”.

There are many interpretations about the purpose and motive of making the reserve heads:

Fear of losing one's head in the afterlife, be it through demons or natural decay (hence the term reserve or replacement heads)
Replacement for the grave statue
Preservation of the appearance even if the mummy falls apart (at that time the technology of mummification was not that advanced)
Used in a magical practice intended to prevent the dead from coming back and harming the bereaved (after R. Tefnin)

In contrast to the grave statues and in general for Egyptian art , it is unique that only part of the human being is depicted. Otherwise it was of central importance to preserve the integrity of the human being. In addition, the people of the upper class were usually shown with wigs and not bald. Furthermore, they are "not created according to the stylistic conventions and in the usual idealization of contemporary sculpture, but with an almost photographic objectivity".

Helmut Satzinger comments on the effect of the Viennese portrait head:

“It is a portrait, but an Egyptian portrait - there is nothing insubstantial, nothing accidental; the image of a person outside of any spatial and temporal conditions, any individual situation or mood. In its artistic conception it stands outside of what is otherwise obtained from Egypt; in its timelessness it appears modern to the respective observer. "

- Satzinger

The head was discovered in 1914 by Hermann Junker in the vicinity of the Cheops pyramid . He carried out archaeological excavations there between 1912 and 1929, a large part of the objects from the Old Kingdom in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

Half right profile
Right profile
Left profile
Left ear in detail

literature

Hermann Junker (Ed.): Gîza I. The mastabas of the 4th dynasty on the Westfriedhof . Report on the work carried out by the Academy of Sciences in Vienna at joint expense with Dr. Wilhelm Pelizaeus undertook excavations in the cemetery of the Old Kingdom near the pyramids of Gîza (= Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Philosophical-historical class. Memoranda . Volume 69.1 ). Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna / Leipzig 1929, p. 198 ( PDF file; 69.6 MB - panels IXb and XII).
Helmut Satzinger : Egyptian Art in Vienna. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna approx. 1980, ISBN 3-900325-03-0 .
Wilfried Seipel : Replacement head . In: God, Man, Pharaoh. Four thousand years of human image in the sculpture of ancient Egypt . Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-900325-22-7 , p. 90–93 (catalog for the exhibition in the Künstlerhaus from May 25 to October 4, 1992).
Brigitte Jaroš-Deckert, Eva Rogge: Statues of the Old Kingdom (= Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum. Loose-leaf catalog of Egyptian antiquities. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Egyptian-Oriental collection . Delivery 15). von Zabern, Mainz 1993, ISBN 3-8053-1497-3 , p. 81–86 ( PDF file; 62.7 MB ).
Helmut Satzinger : The Art History Museum in Vienna. The Egyptian-Oriental Collection (= Ancient World . Special issue / Zabern's illustrated books on archeology. Volume 14 ). von Zabern, Mainz 1994, ISBN 3-8053-1600-3 .
Dirk van der Plas (Ed.): Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien (= Egyptian Treasures in Europe) . Volume 5 ). CCER-DCRM, Utrecht 2002, ISBN 90-393-2130-2 (CD-ROM).

Web links

Commons : Reserve Head (KHM 7787) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Reserve head in the object database of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
Entry and description on The Global Egyptian Museum

Individual evidence

↑ H. Junker: The portrait head. In: Gîza I. Vienna 1929, p. 198.
↑ B. Jaroš-Deckert, E. Rogge: Reserve head. In: Statues of the Old Kingdom. Mainz 1993, p. 81.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d H. Satzinger: The Art History Museum in Vienna. The Egyptian-Oriental Collection. Mainz 1994, p. 106.
^ H. Satzinger: Egyptian Art in Vienna. Vienna approx. 1980, p. 12.

[1] H. Junker: The portrait head. In: Gîza I. Vienna 1929, p. 198.

[2] B. Jaroš-Deckert, E. Rogge: Reserve head. In: Statues of the Old Kingdom. Mainz 1993, p. 81.

[ReferenceA-3] H. Satzinger: The Art History Museum in Vienna. The Egyptian-Oriental Collection. Mainz 1994, p. 106.

[4] H. Satzinger: Egyptian Art in Vienna. Vienna approx. 1980, p. 12.