Relief of Ka-aper and Tjenetet
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The couple's skin colors reflect culturally approved gender roles. While she is fair-skinned-wealthy women should stay indoors and not have to work-his tan reflects outdoor masculine pursuits.
Damage to the eyes reveals that ancient tomb-robbers gouged them out to avoid the evil-eye. Tjenetet's delicately rendered ear, however, remains intact.
Tomb of Ka-aper, Saqqara, Egypt;
With Paul Mallon, New York, by 1948;
Purchased from Paul Mallon, through Harold Woodbury Parsons, by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1948.
Henry Fischer, “The Scribe of the Army in a Saqqara Mastaba of the Early Fifth Dynasty,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 18, no. 4 (October 1959): 233-72.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 22.
Miroslav Verner, “The Mastaba of Kaaper,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 120, Heft 2 (1993): 84.
Nadine Cherpion, “La conception de l’Homme à l’Ancien Empire d’après les bas-reliefs figurant les notables,” in L’art egyptien au temps des pyramides, exh. cat. (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999).
Nadine Cherpion, “The Human Image in Old Kingdom Nonroyal Reliefs,” in Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), 114n52.
Miroslav Bárta, Abusir V: The Cemeteries at Abusir South I (Prague: Set Out, 2001), 173-77, figs. 422-25.
Bertha Porter et al., Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, vol. 3, Memphis, pt. 2, Saqqara to Dashūr (Oxford: Griffith Institute, 2003), 501.
Kate Garland and John Twilley, “The Restoration, Treatment, Scientific Examination, and Re-treatment of an Egyptian Limestone Relief from the Tomb of Ka-aper,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 45 (2009): 303-17.
