Figure Vase of Woman Holding Dog, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, 1479-1353 BCE at the Brooklyn Museum

 Throughout the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty, a small group of potters, perhaps members of a single workshop, fashioned charming vessels in human and animal forms. They shaped the two halves of each container in open molds and joined the pieces along the sides. Complex details such as arms were created by hand and applied to the molded pieces. The potters then covered the vessel with a red slip (a mixture of clay and water) and polished the surface. This example depicts a servant woman carrying a small dog, perhaps the honored pet of her master or mistress. - Brooklyn Museum

Note: I wonder what aspect of the figure points to the woman being a servant? (I'm not as familiar with Egyptian art as Roman art!)

Image: Figure Vase of Woman Holding A Dog, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, 1479-1353 BCE that I photographed at the Brooklyn Museum.

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Portrait of the noblewoman Lady Tjepu

 One of the most remarkable paintings to survive from ancient Egypt, this depiction of the noblewoman Tjepu came from a tomb built for her son Nebamun and a man named lpuky.  Egyptian artists usually did not depict individuals as they truly looked, but rather as eternally youthful, lavishly dressed, and in an attitude of repose.  Tjepu was about forty years old when this painting was executed, but she is shown in what was the height of youthful fashion during the reign of Amunhotep III: a perfumed cone on her heavy wig, a delicate side tress, and a semitransparent, fringed linen dress. - Brooklyn Museum 

Image: Portrait of the noblewoman Lady Tjepu, painted gesso on limestone, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amunhotep III (1390-1352 BCE) from tomb no. 181 at Thebes that I photographed at the Brooklyn Museum.

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Neck rests from New Kingdom, Egypt

Although the most common ancient Egyptian head rests found by archaeologists consist of a stand with an upper curved section to support the head and single or multiple supports attached to a fixed base, rare folding New Kingdom examples have also been discovered, featuring sculptures of Bes. Frequently represented on furniture, Bes was a household god who was often depicted as a lion. He was also a protective deity, and in this role he would safeguard the sleeping or the deceased against enemies with a ferocious growl like that indicated on his face in these examples.

While usually shown without any cushion to soften the hard surface on which the head lies, some headrests have been found that still have soft cloth wrapped around them, so they may not have been as uncomfortable as the bare rests suggest. The ancient Egyptians tended to view death as an eternal kind of sleep – as a result, many of the headrests found in Egyptian tombs were inscribed with the owner’s name and epithets. Archaeologists think some of the more ornate head rests, like those found in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, depicted a religious association with the solar cult, since an individual lowered their head onto the head rest at night and arose from it in the morning.

Folding neck rest with depiction of Bes from the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, ivory, New Kingdom, 18th dynasty courtesy of touregypt.net, Folding neck rest with depiction of Bes, New Kingdom, 1552-1069 BCE,

Folding neck rest with depiction of Bes, New Kingdom, 1552-1069 BCE, wood, in the collections of The Louvre courtesy of Hervé Lewandowski

Headrest from the tomb of King Tutankhamun with the base of the headrest depicting two “lions of the horizon”, while the god Shu holds up the head’s cup, in the same manner as is seen in the Book of the Dead where the solar barque rests on a stand. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Jon Bodsworth.

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