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)
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A limestone statue depicting a seated Egyptian couple.
The artifact is a limestone statue featuring a male and female figure seated side by side on a block seat. The figures are depicted with traditional Egyptian hairstyles and garments. Hieroglyphic inscriptions are present on the seat between the figures, indicating possible names or titles. The style suggests careful attention to proportion and detail, common in Egyptian funerary art.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 40.523 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3454 tier-2
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.