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Abstract

This an attempt at a stylistic and historical analysis of fi ve terracotta fi gurines from the Egyptian collections of V.S. Golenishchev and G. Lukyanov (the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts). The fi gurines date back to the time of the Achaemenid rule and the Ptolemaic dynasty. The fi gurine of the Scythian archer, in the author’s opinion, is associated with “combat magic”: the nomads (the “Asiatic”) was a generally symbol of the enemy of Egypt. The statuette of a young man wearing the causia is probably a grotesque image of the so-called “boastful warrior”, which is directly related to the “New” Greek comedy. This artifact is associated with the theatre. The fi gurine dates from the 3rd – 2nd centuries BC and refl ects the process of settling the Greek- Macedonian element in Egypt, which brought the traditions of Hellenistic culture, in particular, the theater. The head of a Persian, the statuette of a Persian horseman, and the head of a Nubian statuette (?) refer to the multi-ethnic composition of the Egyptian population in the second half of the 1st millennium BC. First of all, this refers to Memphis by its very variegated population at the time in question. Probably, the head of the Nubian and the fi gurine of the Persian horseman are the works of the Memphis master of the Hellenistic time, a Greek or a Hellenized Egyptian. Terracotta fi gurines from the Egyptian collections of Russian Egyptologists provide invaluable information for studying the history of day-to-day life in Egyptian society.

Keywords

Egypt, antique terracotta fi gurines, museum collections, Pushkin Museum, V.S. Golenishchev, G. Lukyanov, “image of the other”.

Sergey V. Obukhov

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

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