Papers, Chapters by Marsha Hill
Tine Bagh and Anna Manly (eds), Amarna - City of the Sun God. Copenhagen., 2023
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Deanna Kiser-Go and Carol A. Redmount, eds., Weseretkau "Mighty of Kas". Papers in Memory of Cathleen A. Keller. Columbus, GA: Lockwood Press., 2023
The Amarna building designated R43.2 was excavated by John Pendlebury in 1936–1937, the last seas... more The Amarna building designated R43.2 was excavated by John Pendlebury in 1936–1937, the last season of the Egypt Exploration Society’s prewar Amarna work. In the excavation publications this structure is termed the “House of the King’s Statue”—after the remains of what appears to be a wooden shrine. Based on finds in the building, Barry Kemp has observed that it may have been a focus of private religious activity. The pottery survey has corroborated this suggestion, and the locale has been contextualized within Anna Stevens’s study of private religion at Amarna. Still, the particular focus or foci of the religious activity at the building remain unclear, and speculation has often been drawn to the import of a ring bezel with the name Nebmaatre and a wooden fragment that bore the name “Amenhotep” in a cartouche. Further examination of the finds brings forward a better understanding of the concerns of those furnishing the structure and offering devotions there.
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Marsha Hill and Michael Seymour in Frédéric Payraudeau and Raphaëlle Meffre, eds., Éclats du crépuscule. Recueil d'études sur l’Égypte tardive offert à Olivier Perdu, pp. 79-93. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 315. Leuven,, 2022
The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired a small glazed steatite lion with the two cartou... more The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired a small glazed steatite lion with the two cartouches of Necho II (r. 610-595 BC) on opposite shoulders (2019.259). The piece is startlingly non-Egyptian in details, appearing generally Near Eastern, and, in fact, exhibits features usually associated with slightly later Persian Period art in Egypt. Closer study combining our efforts as Egyptian and Near Eastern art specialists reveals how very strongly the lion suggests the Egyptian king’s specific involvements in the contemporary moment in the ancient Near East.
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Martina Ullmann, Gabriele Pieke, Friedhelm Hoffmann, and Christian Bayer (eds.), Up and Down the Nile: ägyptologische Studien für Regine Schulz. Ägypten und Altes Testament 97, 2021
The Miho statue depicts a seated falcon-headed god wearing a tripartite wig and a kilt, height 41... more The Miho statue depicts a seated falcon-headed god wearing a tripartite wig and a kilt, height 41.9 cm, created in solid silver with partly preserved gold sheet overlay and semi-precious stone hair and eyes. A circular fitting atop the head suggests the god did or could wear a crown with a base that fitted over it. Fisted hands rest on his thighs, the right one upright and the left with the folded fingers downward. The feet are misshapen by damage.
In its public appearances while in the Benzion Collection at the 1949 Égypte-France exhibition in Paris and a 1953 Drouot sale, the statuette was dated to the Saite Period. In a brief mention with illustration after it had reemerged, largely cleaned, on the art market, it was suggested to date to the Third Intermediate Period or Late Period. When exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum as part of the Shumei Collection in 1996, a Dynasty 19 date was proposed. Since that exhibition, it has been on view at the Miho Museum with that date. In the current paper, the authors reexamine the remarkable statue from several perspectives to establish a dating, possible provenance, and more complex understanding of the meanings of materials.
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STATUES IN CONTEXT Production, meaning and (re)uses, edited by A. Masson-Berghoff. BMPES 10, 2019
With the accrual of new archaeological finds and new textual analyses, and with growing attention... more With the accrual of new archaeological finds and new textual analyses, and with growing attention to the range, registers and economic aspects of 1st millennium religious practices, it seems a propitious time to reconsider the practice of offering small divine statuary. Religious activities are surveyed briefly to gauge their similarities and distinctions in terms of participation and associated practices. Then the history of the practice of providing small statuary, specifically cupreous metal statuary, is surveyed. From the pharaonic period there is evidence from the inscriptions that divine statuettes naming private provider/beneficiaries might be associated with economic benefits provided to the temples, while material evidence highlights the fact that statuary donations were not guided by the volition of a large pious population regardless of temple requirements, but were intended to play a role.
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Sean Hemingway and Kiki Karoglou, eds., Art of the Hellenistic Kingdoms: From Pergamon to Rome. Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia, 2019
The Greek term for faience-producers was kallainopoioi, or turquoise-makers, signaling the blue c... more The Greek term for faience-producers was kallainopoioi, or turquoise-makers, signaling the blue color range associated with the material. Indeed, Hellenistic faience exhibits a rich range of blues from robin’s egg to caerulean along with greens and other colors, inventive decoration of great beauty, new and larger forms, and new technology that make it yet another high point in the long history of the material. In this brief contribution, I describe the Hellenistic faience repertoire, and offer a few observations stimulated by the chefs d’oeuvre that formed part of the exhibition "Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World."
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Horizon. The Amarna Project and Amarna Trust newsletter No. 19., 2018
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M. Gabolde and R. Vergnieux, eds., Les édifices du règne d'Amenhotep IV - Akhénaton — Urbanisme et Révolution: colloque, Montpellier, 18-19 novembre 2011. CENiM 20 , 2018
Anchoring the northern end of the Central City of Amarna with its huge expanse, the Great Aten Te... more Anchoring the northern end of the Central City of Amarna with its huge expanse, the Great Aten Temple was and is the repository of fragmented and difficult evidence that bears on many central questions about art and religion of the period, ranging from artistic style and repertoire to religious ritual, inclusiveness or exclusiveness, and economic underpinnings. This article examines some of the statues that stood in
the Sanctuary zone of the Great Aten Temple based on the fragments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art along with a few relief fragments that can be associated with the structures of the area, and asks about their placement and about their implications with regard to some of these questions.
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Joan Aruz and Michael Seymour, eds., Assyria to Iberia. Art and Culture in the Iron Age. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia., 2016
In an essay for the “Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age” exhibition catalogue, I ... more In an essay for the “Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age” exhibition catalogue, I wrote about the situation and particular artistic atmosphere in Third Intermediate Period Egypt at the time of the encounter with the Phoenicians. In this paper that results from my Wilkinson Lecture at the time of the exhibition, I want to focus on the situation in the Egyptian Delta more specifically to evoke recent, and recall some older, insights into the nature of that environment for the bearing they might have on understanding interactions with the Phoenicians. In this context I pursue two particular sets of artistic themes that speak to the quality of engagements. While scholars have assiduously mapped many Phoenician iconographic themes and their sources or possible sources, along with traces of Phoenician physical presence, it is hopefully constructive to bring recent understandings of the moment and the particular area in Egypt to the consideration of the complexity of interactions.
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Adela Oppenheim et al. (eds.), Ancient Egypt Transformed The Middle Kingdom, 2015
Middle Kingdom royal statues frequently exhibit physical evidence that attests to their renewed i... more Middle Kingdom royal statues frequently exhibit physical evidence that attests to their renewed integration into later contexts within the two millennia of pharaonic culture that followed their creation. Reuse is a pervasive phenomenon in ancient Egypt, and the particular character of any reuse is certainly inflected by both period attitudes and locale—
that is, by what is available for a given location. From a modern vantage point, the two are difficult to disentangle.
The site of Tanis in the Nile Delta offers something of an exception: an opportunity to take an unusually clear sounding of many of the circumstances around reuse in its region through at least the Third Intermediate Period.
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Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar:The Art and Culture of Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honor of Dorothea Arnold, 2016
A statuette in The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the few non-royal examples stylistically ... more A statuette in The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the few non-royal examples stylistically datable to the Amarna Period. The idiosyncratic triad has been interpreted as a narrative group or as a family group following Old Kingdom traditions. Close examination of the small sculpture reveals clues to the organization within the triad, which is best understood within an expanded concept of “private icons” as argued by Anna Stevens. The observations about the statuette in this article are complemented by materials investigations presented by Ann Heywood in the following article in this journal.
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Revue d'Egyptologie, 2015
The article reports on a gilded silver "temple pendant" of Nephthys inscribed for Mereskhonsu, su... more The article reports on a gilded silver "temple pendant" of Nephthys inscribed for Mereskhonsu, suggesting it belonged to the Mereskhonsu who was a "great follower of the God's Wife"" Shepenwepet II and the mother of the Chief Steward Akhamenru.
The appendix details features of construction, techniques of decoration, and the condition of the small gilded silver statuette of Nephthys.
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J. van Dijk, ed., Another Mouthful of Dust. Egyptological Studies in Honour of Geoffrey Thorndike Martin. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 246, 2016
Investigations from both Egyptological and technical directions point to a date for the Metropoli... more Investigations from both Egyptological and technical directions point to a date for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Ptah statuette in the late New Kingdom or possibly Dynasty 21. This very fine statuette exhibits a style that is attributable to that era and a figure that conforms to the earlier model for representation of the figure of the god Ptah, a god whose representational details, moreover, can be understood in relationship to particular emphases that evolved over the New Kingdom through the Kushite Period. At the same time, the statuette demonstrates a cluster of features that seem to identify at least one group of productions that belong to an early stage in the sustained production of cupreous statuary.
The interest of the Late Ramesside period as a transitional era leading to the arts and technologies that characterize the Third Intermediate Period is often noted. The significance of the era is confirmed in the case of this remarkable statuette.
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Joan Aruz, et al., eds., Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age, exh. cat. MMA , 2014
Egypt remained an actor on the international stage during the Neo- Assyrian period, but the influ... more Egypt remained an actor on the international stage during the Neo- Assyrian period, but the influence of Egyptian imagery, and of imagery inspired by Egypt, exceeded the country’s political weight and its importance as a trading partner. The nature of this imagery and, possibly, certain Egyptian themes or myths that could have circulated internationally during this period owe a good deal to the particular cultural and religious climate in Egypt itself. Indeed, specific aspects of contemporary Egyptian culture appear to be significant in our understanding of the country’s influence in the ancient world at this critical juncture
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Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 2014
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Friederike Seyfried, ed., In the Light of Amarna: 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery. Catalogue of an exhibition at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, 2012
Also translated for the German version.
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Horizon (The Amarna Project and Amarna Trust Newsletter), 2012
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Horizon (The Amarna Project and Amarna Trust Newsletter) , 2011
preliminary remarks on a subject studied further in a forthcoming gedenkschrift for Cathleen Keller
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Claire Derriks and Luc Delvaux, eds., Antiquités égyptiennes au Musée Royal de Mariemont, 2009
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Journal of the History of Collections, 2009
A famed connoisseur of European paintings and of objects of fine art from many cultures, Count Gr... more A famed connoisseur of European paintings and of objects of fine art from many cultures, Count Grigory Sergeievich Stroganoff of Rome, Paris, and St Petersburg also had a large collection of Egyptian art. This early Egyptian collection was dispersed with scarcely any record at the time of Stroganoff’s death, and so has been known almost exclusively from a slender booklet produced in connection with an exhibition mounted in 1880 in Aachen. The three authors join their own researches from different perspectives to create a portrait of Stroganoff as a collector of Egyptian antiquities.
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Papers, Chapters by Marsha Hill
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In its public appearances while in the Benzion Collection at the 1949 Égypte-France exhibition in Paris and a 1953 Drouot sale, the statuette was dated to the Saite Period. In a brief mention with illustration after it had reemerged, largely cleaned, on the art market, it was suggested to date to the Third Intermediate Period or Late Period. When exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum as part of the Shumei Collection in 1996, a Dynasty 19 date was proposed. Since that exhibition, it has been on view at the Miho Museum with that date. In the current paper, the authors reexamine the remarkable statue from several perspectives to establish a dating, possible provenance, and more complex understanding of the meanings of materials.
the Sanctuary zone of the Great Aten Temple based on the fragments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art along with a few relief fragments that can be associated with the structures of the area, and asks about their placement and about their implications with regard to some of these questions.
that is, by what is available for a given location. From a modern vantage point, the two are difficult to disentangle.
The site of Tanis in the Nile Delta offers something of an exception: an opportunity to take an unusually clear sounding of many of the circumstances around reuse in its region through at least the Third Intermediate Period.
The appendix details features of construction, techniques of decoration, and the condition of the small gilded silver statuette of Nephthys.
The interest of the Late Ramesside period as a transitional era leading to the arts and technologies that characterize the Third Intermediate Period is often noted. The significance of the era is confirmed in the case of this remarkable statuette.
contact author for article
In its public appearances while in the Benzion Collection at the 1949 Égypte-France exhibition in Paris and a 1953 Drouot sale, the statuette was dated to the Saite Period. In a brief mention with illustration after it had reemerged, largely cleaned, on the art market, it was suggested to date to the Third Intermediate Period or Late Period. When exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum as part of the Shumei Collection in 1996, a Dynasty 19 date was proposed. Since that exhibition, it has been on view at the Miho Museum with that date. In the current paper, the authors reexamine the remarkable statue from several perspectives to establish a dating, possible provenance, and more complex understanding of the meanings of materials.
the Sanctuary zone of the Great Aten Temple based on the fragments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art along with a few relief fragments that can be associated with the structures of the area, and asks about their placement and about their implications with regard to some of these questions.
that is, by what is available for a given location. From a modern vantage point, the two are difficult to disentangle.
The site of Tanis in the Nile Delta offers something of an exception: an opportunity to take an unusually clear sounding of many of the circumstances around reuse in its region through at least the Third Intermediate Period.
The appendix details features of construction, techniques of decoration, and the condition of the small gilded silver statuette of Nephthys.
The interest of the Late Ramesside period as a transitional era leading to the arts and technologies that characterize the Third Intermediate Period is often noted. The significance of the era is confirmed in the case of this remarkable statuette.
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Metal statuary offers a surprising view of Egyptian art because the cultural, social, and manufacturing networks from which it emerged were often different from those that produced stone statuary, the more familiar artistic expression of ancient Egypt. In the presence of these extraordinary images of gods and pious individuals, the temples, in particular, emerge as crucibles in which diverse influences came together to replenish the art and beliefs of Egyptian society. The superb statues and statuettes illustrated in this volume were made in a variety of precious metals and copper alloys over a span of some two millennia. Especially dramatic are those from the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1070–664 B.C.), an era whose conventional name belies its great artistic accomplishment. The splendid statuary from this period, the apogee of the Egyptian metalworking tradition, is perhaps best represented by the sumptuous figure of a priestess and noblewoman named "Takushit," whose entire body surface is covered with texts and depictions of god intricately inlaid with thin strips of precious metal.
Also included in this volume are two essays on recent archaeological discoveries that shed light on poorly understood aspects of Egyptian metal statuary. These reports on excavations at the Sacred Animal Necropolis in North Saqqara and at the village of 'Ayn Manâwir in the Kharga Oasis yield insight into the practices surrounding temple statuary, notably that these works were provided by donors for actual use in the temple and, after many years of service, reverently decommissioned and buried in large caches. The final essay explores and explains the intricate technological aspects of Egyptian metal statuary as an integral part of its unique appeal. The technical descriptions provided for each work are thus as precise, detailed and consistent in terminology as possible—crucial considerations for a field of sculptural studies in which accurate information about manufacture and material is inextricably linked to an appreciation of the artistry and history of the medium.
Contributions by Laurent Coulon, Sue Davies, Élisabeth Delange, Richard Fazzini, Florence Gombert, Adela Oppenheim, Diana Craig Patch, Maarten Raven, Edna R. Russmann, John H. Taylor, Eleni Tourna, Maria Viglaki-Sofianou, Michel Wuttmann.
Contributions by Laurent Coulon, Sue Davies, Élisabeth Delange, Richard Fazzini, Florence Gombert, Adela Oppenheim, Diana Craig Patch, Maarten Raven, Edna R. Russmann, John H. Taylor, Eleni Tourna, Maria Viglaki-Sofianou, Michel Wuttmann.
Translated by François Boisivon.
Excerpt attached.
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Under this program the department's extensive collection of facsimiles of wall decoration, principally produced by the Graphic Section of the Museum's Egyptian Expedition between 1907 and 1937 and supported by the Rogers Fund, received new attention. About half of the facsimiles were exhibited in 1930, accompanied by a small catalogue by Ambrose Lansing, then Associate Curator in the Department of Egyptian Art, and selected examples appeared in the old galleries. In 1976, with the opening of Phase I of the complete reinstallation, virtually all the pictures were placed on exhibition.
The department has always been cautious about collecting original paintings, as they generally occur in standing monuments. It undertook the facsimile project not only to illustrate "the history of draughtsmanship and painting," as Norman de Garis Davies, head of the Graphic Section, said, but also to acquire aids to understanding and appreciating actual objects in the collection. Today, the facsimiles are valuable records because monuments in Egypt are continually destroyed.