Pair Statue of Nebsen and Nebet-ta
Description
Object Label: To express the physical and spiritual bond between two individuals, sculptors devised a form called the pair statue. The most common variety showed the subjects—a husband and wife, a mother and child, or a king and a divinity, for example—seated together on a chair or bench. The earliest documented examples date to the reign of King Djoser in the Third Dynasty (circa 2675–2625 B.C.E.). This New Kingdom pair statue represents a married couple. The inscription tells us that the man is Nebsen, a scribe in the royal treasury, and the woman is Nebet-ta, a singer in the temple of the goddess Isis. They each pass one arm behind the other, a symbol of closeness. In order to convey this sentiment and to create a harmonious design, the sculptor extended the arms to unnatural lengths. Caption: Pair Statue of Nebsen and Nebet-ta, ca. 1400–1352 B.C.E.. Limestone, pigment, 15 7/8 x 8 9/16 x 9 1/4 in. (40.4 x 21.8 x 23.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 40.523. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
The same text in other collections
Linked by shared inventory number
(BKM-Object 3454).
Each record below describes this same artifact or text from a different angle.
- Brooklyn 40.523 PNM text
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A painted limestone pair statue shows a man and a woman standing side by side, each holding an inscriptioned panel with legs forward and arms held close to the body.
The image depicts two life-size-ish seated-on-bench figures carved in the round from limestone and preserved with traces of pigment. The left figure appears male with a black-dyed wig and a broad beaded collar; the right figure appears female with a similar wig/forelock and a beaded collar. Both figures stand upright with one arm bent inward at the side and the other hand resting low by the front. Each figure holds or is paired with a vertical rectangular inscription panel in front of the torso, filled with hieroglyphs in multiple rows. The panels are framed/outlined and the background field is plain limestone. No clear cartouche naming a king is visible at this resolution. The inscription panels likely identify the individuals (catalogued as Nebsen and Nebet-ta) but the specific hieroglyphic excerpts cannot be reliably transcribed from the provided image. No overt deity symbols (e.g., specific divine attributes) are clearly identifiable on the figures beyond the general royal/elite regalia (beaded collars, wig), and no additional dedicatory text outside the panel inscriptions is clearly legible. There is no Greek/Coptic/Arabic text visible.
Cross-references (3)
- BKM-Accession 40.523 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3454 tier-2
- PNM-Object pnm:83892106 tier-2 (inventory-match)
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.