Cloaked Official of the Middle Kingdom Dynasty 13

 The Twelfth and early Thirteenth Dynasties comprised one of the most creative artistic epochs in Egyptian history.  Artists introduced many new sculptural forms - some that continued for centuries and others that were soon abandoned.  One of the period's most dramatic and long lasting innovations was the cloaked statue.  The cloak symbolized the god Osiris, whose corpse was wrapped tightly in bandages and who was eventually reborn to everlasting life.  Individuals shown with their bodies shrouded in a thick mantle thus expressed the wish to be reborn following their own physical deaths. - The Brooklyn Museum.

Image: Cloaked Official, Middle Kingdom, early Dynasty 13, 1759-1675 BCE, red quartzite, that I photographed at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014.

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