STATUE OF TJENTI, V DYNASTY (2494-2345 BCE). EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO, ON LOAN TO THE SCUDERIE DEL QUIRINALE Statues of Egyptian men are very rarely nudes, especially of a man like the high-ranking Tjenti. But in the V and VI Dynasty there was a brief fashion for funerary statues showing men in the nude, symbolic rather than literal, showing the deceased in a state of "rejuvenated youth". By depicting themselves as nude adults, officials sought to harness the vitality and potential for growth associated with childhood to ensure their own rebirth in the afterlife. In a funerary context, it suggests the tomb owner is stripped of worldly pretenses and is spiritually "pure" for eternity. Here we see Tjenti as a young man, not the old chap he was when he died. The small red sandstone statue shows some signs of polychromy. His unerect phallus is circumcised, as many Egyptians were. He has no body hair because he is clad in a powerful "costume" of immortality.
For #PhallusThursday, we're going into the distant past, into the western cemetery of #Giza in #Egypt, where this unusual nude statue of a high palace official, #Tjenti, from about 2400 BCE, during the V Dynasty. This represents Tjenti in his most true and immortal form. #AncientBluesky 🏺
