An Anthropology of Images by Hans Belting;

Author:Hans Belting;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 4.8. Plaster mask of Nimaatre, Old Kingdom, Dynasty 6 (2350–2194 BCE), Egypt, Giza, Western Cemetery, Tomb G 2092+2093: pit (shaft) G 2092 a A, chamber. Gypsum plaster, 22.2 x 17 x 20 cm. Harvard University—Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition 37.644. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photo © 2011 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A similar lifelike quality characterizes the stone “reserve heads” that were briefly in use during that same Fourth Dynasty period (Fig. 4.8): they could only have had a symbolic function, multiplying the stock of embodiments available to the deceased in the image repertoire of his tomb.52 This drive toward heightened verisimilitude waned when the notion of an afterlife resembling the temporal life of the living gave way to a new conception of the dead as souls dwelling in timelessness, who therefore no longer needed the accoutrements of an earthly life. An afterlife in the tomb was replaced by the idea of the Hereafter, and the notional change became manifest in a new death image.

The Egyptian conception of the image is most clearly demonstrated by a rite of animation known as the “mouth-opening ritual.” By New Kingdom times, the ceremony required that no less than seventy-five different actions and incantations be performed on the mummy, so that, as one incantation put it, “the soul will remember what it has forgotten” (Fig. 4.9). The custom had its origins in the Old Kingdom as a “statue ritual” that was conducted upon the completion of the statue but before it was set in place. It was through this animation ritual that the statue officially became a medium. What made a statue into an image, then, was not the manufacture of the physical statue, but rather a magical act that qualified it for embodiment. Only later was this ritual transferred from the statue to the mummy in order to secure there the interaction of the soul with the Hereafter.53 This chronology is important, because it attests once again to the analogy between the sculpture and the mummy.

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