A 2,500-year-old Ancient Egyptian sculpture of a sacred baboon is to be offered for sale.
The 40cm-tall statue, dated to 664-343 BC, is expected to reach about £250,000 ($340,000), and will be displayed at the fine arts and antiquities fair TEFAF Maastricht in March.
It is being sold by London gallery David Aaron, which acquired it from the estate of the late Illinois collectors Henry and Marlene Shatkin, who had owned it since 1989.
Baboons were highly regarded in ancient Egypt as devotees of the sun and were often depicted with their arms outstretched in solar worship.
This sculpture, which is missing its lower legs and has damage to its head, shows the baboon wearing a shrine necklace, with its paws on its knees.
Salomon Aaron, director at David Aaron, described it as “an exceptional example of a 26th-30th Dynasty, Late Period Egyptian devotional sculpture”.
“This particular piece is dedicated to the role of the baboon in the rising and setting of the Sun; we know this because the baboon’s arms are positioned outstretched in solar worship,” Mr Aaron told The National.
Baboons were also associated with Thoth, the god of the Moon, wisdom, science and measurement, and also as an adviser to Ra the Sun god. Thoth was often depicted as a dog-face baboon or a man with the head of a baboon when in the form of A’an, the god of equilibrium.
“This baboon is a magnificent ancient Egyptian sculpture. It is exceptional because of its size, iconography, style and importantly it is accompanied by an illustrious published provenance,” he said.
The Shatkins owned the sculpture from 1989. Before that, it was held at the Merrin Gallery in New York, following an auction at Sotheby’s London in 1969, and during the 1960s by Milan’s Galleria Geri.
Its earlier provenance can be traced to Albert Eid, an antiquities dealer in Cairo. He was the son of the Belgian consul, George Alphonse Eid, and kept a large shop in a former 14th-century mosque.
David Aaron will also be exhibiting a rare Greek stone relief dedicated to Parthenos, a young Athenian woman, from 375–350 BC, as well as a Roman torso from the 1st to 2nd century AD
The gallery recently offered for sale a $2 million bust of an ancient Egyptian goddess 'with a nose job', thought to have been a high-quality imitation, after it was authenticated as a 2,500-year-old sculpture by one of the masters of the time.
An oddly shiny surface and unusually preserved nose led some to dismiss it as fake when it appeared at auction in Gloucestershire, UK, in 2022, after 40 years in a private collection.
In fact, the 24cm bust dates from the reign of Amasis II (570–526BC) and is attributed to a sculptor known as the Greywacke Master after the stone from which it is made.
It is thought to have come from the Temple of Neith at Sais, Egypt. However, it was given a replacement nose by 18th century Italian craftsmen attempting to restore the badly damaged face and then painted over in later years.
