A remarkably well-preserved example of 18th Dynasty Block Statue. The term ‘block statue’ identifies a specific category of Egyptian sculptures, distinct by their peculiar appearance and iconography. The person represented is portrayed in a distinctive squatting pose, with the knees drawn to the chest and the arms crossed on top of them. In this case the solidity of the figure is even furtherly enhanced by the fact that this man wears a thick cloak, which transforms his body in an inverted truncated pyramid, from the top of which the head and the hands emerge.

Block statues represent private individuals who are male and adult, and never kings or deities. They were often dedicated in sanctuaries and could be part of larger monuments such as a stele. They usually bear inscriptions, uninscribed examples (like the present one) where deemed to be very rare by Regine Schulz in her paper on block statues for the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. Reasons for the lack of inscriptions include being unfinished, partly destroyed, or having become dethatched from a larger monument.

This man wears a bag wig. Facial features are rendered in detail. The mouth is indented and very slightly curved downwards on the edges. The ears are worked on a single plan. The hands emerge from the top of the cloak. The right hand appears to be clinched in fist. Lines for the inscriptions had already been carved on the frontal part of the cloak. The presence of a schematic layout for the epigraphic completion of the statuette strongly suggests that we are looking at an exceptionally rare example of unfinished block statue or at an equally rare model for approval.