Human world
Height: 52cm
This painted wooden model of a servant girl comes from a tomb excavated in Beni Hasan, northern Egypt. She is carrying a chest on her head and two geese in her hand. Model servant girls like this brought food and drink to the dead in the afterlife. Other models in the museum show men and women making beer, slaughtering oxen and girls bringing ducks and pigeons and baskets of food or beer on their heads. There are also models depicting boats and workshops for carpenters, weavers or potters.
During the First Intermediate Period (2181 – 2040 BC) and the Middle Kingdom (2133 – 1786 BC), it became fashionable to substitute crude wooden models for more sophisticated tomb paintings.