Since prehistory, ancient Egyptians crafted figurines depicting humans, animals, and other subjects. However, scholars have largely overlooked the category of clay figurines, both fired and unfired, due to the perceived lack of value of the material and variable preservation of their organic material composition. Despite this, clay figurines offer a unique glimpse into ancient peoples' ideas, gestures, and attitudes, particularly when shaped by hand. Their prevalence, malleability, and portability make them accessible to people of all economic and social backgrounds. This volume focuses on Egyptian clay figurines from the Bronze Age, ranging from approximately 2100 to 1550 BC, and also includes examples from the neighboring countries of Nubia and the Levant, as they are the most immediate corresponding partners in terms of diffusion and entanglement of material culture. The papers in this volume aim to examine previously under- or unexplored topics relating to clay figurines, such as their archaeological context, manufacturing techniques, technological processes, classification, agency, and social significance. Additionally, two sections of the volume will be dedicated to comparative material from the 4th and 3rd millennium BC and the Late Bronze Age.
Theory and Methods
Miniaci, Gianluca
Same story, different destiny: The isolation of clay figurines in the Egyptian material culture
Dubiel, Ulrike
Images in Clay – Aspects of Image Production beyond the Residence
Grajetzki, Wolfram
Clay and ceramic figurines in Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period burials
Clay Figurines before the II Millennium: A Comparative Glimpse
Brémont-Bellini, Axelle
Not to be lumped together. Differences in context, typology and use practices of bovine figurines in the Predynastic period
Brice, Elizabeth
Here and there, but not everywhere: Predynastic zoomorphic figurines as regionally diverse objects during the early-mid fourth millennium BCE
Whelan, Paul
A Canid Conundrum: questions raised by the Early Dynastic figurine corpus from Abydos
Clay Figurines in Middle Bronze Age Egypt
Jensen, Victoria
Clay Figurines and Models from the Palace, Settlement, and Cemeteries of Deir el-Ballas
Miniaci, Gianluca
Clay figurines from Lahun
Patch, Diana Craig
Agency in a Seventeenth Dynasty Burial in the Asasif: A Pair of Figurines
Sarrazin, Émilie
The Women Who Gathered at Tell Edfu: An Archaeological Discussion on an Assemblage of Female Figurines from the Second Intermediate Period and Early New Kingdom
Jeuthe, Clara
Remarks on figurines and their find contexts from the excavations in Ayn Asil, Dakhla Oasis
Mahmoud Abdel Razek, Marwa
Cairo Museum Second Intermediate Period Clay Female Figurines
García González, Luisa M.; Blanco, Ana Díaz
A Particular Middle Kingdom Pottery Figure Vessel from Tomb QH35p of Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan, Egypt)
Tooley, Angela; Picardo, Nick
Peculiar People: Plaque Figurines from Wah-sut (South Abydos)
Alù, Cristina; Page, Hannah
Decoding Decoration on Middle Kingdom Egyptian Clay Figurines: Body Modification or Ornamentation?
Clay Figurines in Middle Bronze Age Nubia
Wegner, Josef
A New Look at the Figurine Assemblage of the Lower Nubian C-Group Settlement at Areika
Uhlschmidt, Anna
Grazing the Eternal Horizon: Animal Figurines at the Northern Cemetery of Aniba
Butterworth, Jenny
Lower Nubian C-Group Figurines: Defining the Anthropomorphic Corpus
Andrea Manzo
TbC
Clay Figurines in Middle Bronze Age Western Asia
Makowski, Maciej
Mesopotamian clay figurines on the turn? Typological and quantitative approaches to the study of coroplastic art during the transition from the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BC
Pinnock, Frances
A Group of Mysterious Clay Figurines from Middle Bronze II Ebla
Saler, Camilla
Clay Figurines from Deposit α (nos. 7852–7902) in the Field of Offerings at Byblos
The Technological Aspects of the Clay Figurines
Forte, Vanessa
The incomplete chaîne opératoire: Potentials of the traceological approach applied to figurines made of unfired clay
Page, Hannah
Of Marl and Faience: Compositional analysis of the unfired clay figurines from Lisht with portable ED-XRF
Van der Perre, Athena; Braekmans, Dennis; Boschloos, Vanessa & Hameeuw, Hendrik
Skin-deep: Typology, chemical characterisation and innovative imaging of unfired clay Egyptian execration figurines at the National Museum for Antiquities, Leiden
Beyond Middle Bronze Age Figurines: A Change in the Continuity
Chudzik, Patryk
Clay cow figurines and their place in the votive practices of the Hathor cult in the light of new evidence from the Theban necropolis
Crabbé, Audrey
Magazine menagerie: Rediscovering clay animal figurines in magazine 23 at Deir el-Medina
Gabler, Kathrin; Landrino, Martina
Mud Made for Eternity: Two Life-Size Muna-Statues from TT 217
Peri, Laura
The Megiddo-Taanach Figurines Revisited
Gianluca Miniaci is Associate Professor in Egyptology at the University of Pisa, Honorary Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL – London, and Chercheur associé at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He is currently co-director of the archaeological mission at Zawyet Sultan (Menya, Egypt) and principal investigator for four large national projects. His main research interests focus on the social history of ancient Egypt, the dynamics of material culture in the Eastern Mediterranean between Egypt, the Levant, Aegean, and Nubia in the Middle Bronze Age, and the global and comparative history and archaeology.
Vanessa Forte, following the completion of her PhD (2014) at Sapienza University of Rome, she spent two years as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge University. She currently collaborates to national and international research projects as a member of the Laboratory of Technological and Functional Analyses of Prehistoric Artefacts (LTFAPA), and is an Honorary Fellow at the Sapienza University of Rome.
