Monkeys in the Brooklyn Museum, January 2010

Group of Large and Small Monkeys

Sir Flinders Petrie found at least twenty-three crudely modeled figures of monkeys in a dump at el Amarna in 1891–92. Some of the figures play harps, lyres, or flutes; others hold their young, eat or drink, or even drive chariots. These figures have been interpreted as popular caricatures of the royal family. If this was their true purpose, then acceptance of royal dogma, including respect for the king and the Aten, was not nearly as complete as Akhenaten imagined.

Medium: Limestone

Possible Place Made: Tell el Amarna, Egypt

Dates: ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E.

Dynasty: late XVIII Dynasty

Period: New Kingdom, Amarna Period

Collections: Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art

Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Amarna Period, Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Gallery, 3rd Floor

Accession Number: 16.68 (or 16.61)

Credit Line: Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles
Edwin Wilbour

Text from: www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3139/Group_...