NY-USER-RA REJOINED

by Betsy Brayer

“One plus one equals one,” read the eye-catching headline.

NY-USER-RA

The Gallery’s involvement began in 1942 with the purchase of an eleven-inch-high portrait bust from the estate of Vladimir Gregorievitch Simkhovitch, professor of economic history at Columbia University.  The Aswan-granite figure had been broken at the elbow with the right arm bent above the break line and holding a mace. Assumed to be from a larger statue, it had been found by Simkhovitch’s expedition to the Temple of Amun at Karnak in   1922.

The scholarly sleuth who put the king back together again was Egyptologist Bernard V. Bothmer, curator of ancient art at the Brooklyn Museum, who had been “on this case.” as she put it, for twenty years.  While lecturing in Rochester in 1952, Bothmer stopped by the Gallery and “noticed in the small Egyptian collection the head and shoulders from a royal sculpture which appeared to date from the Old Kingdom. “At that time,” Bothmer wrote in 1974, “I jotted down a summary description of the piece and, as had long been my habit, noted not only the customary measurements but the dimensions of the break as well.: He also photographed the bust from all four sides and then forgot about it for eighteen years. “As so often happens with one’s notes, not much was done with them.”  However, in those 1952 notes, Bothmer observed the sculpture’s remarkable similarity to the head of a complete statue of Ny-user-ra in Cairo.” Several years later, Bothmer saw another related royal bust on view in the Musée National at Beirut, and fifteen years after that, in 1970, he had the chance to study and measure it closely. Then a footnote in Vandier’s Manual beginning “Le Musée du Caire possede une seconde statue de Nioussere” caught Bothmer’s eye, and soon he was rummaging through the vast uncataloged storerooms of the Cairo Museum.

Vandier and then Bothmer had found a headless torso “representing the king, standing, in the position of marching” languishing in Cairo. Legrain had originally discovered it in 1904 in the cave of Karnak.  The chief historical value of the Cairo torso is a small cartouche on the base identifying Ny-user-ra, an obscure pharaoh who ruled circa 2370-2360 BCE.

The Cairo base did not match the Beirut find; but then “a light clicked.” On the basis of the position of the arms, Bothmer reasoned that it might fit the Rochester bust. Old notes, measurements, and photographs strengthened his surmise. He had a case of the Cairo base made and shipped to the Brooklyn Museum where the borrowed Rochester original was waiting.  Soon he was on the phone to Harris

Prior, director, and Isabel Herdle, curator, with the grand news, “It fits!”

The attempt to ship the plaster case of the bust to Cairo was trickier, running afoul of complex Egyptian import regulations. Taking no chances, Bothmer packed the Ny-user-ra cast as “research material” and flew to Cairo himself. The two pieces were put together during a ceremony in the office of Dr. Henri Riad, director of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

Cairo’s two halves were on view in 1980 with labels written in French, English and Arabic.  Part of each label reads: “Upper part a copy from an original displayed in the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester USA.” Only the words “Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester USA” are in English in all three labels.

Ny-user-ra himself may have been obscure, but obscure can mean rare, and the sculpture is one of the few existing pieces that can be positively ascribed to the period in Egyptian history known as the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Kings   wielding a mace with bulbous head---symbol of royal power---are common in Egyptian painting and relief. According to Bothmer only two sculptures of the king carrying his mace are known, both in repose and both from the Old Kingdom.  One is at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the other is “The Rochester-Cairo statue of Ny-user-ra.” The empty but clenched left fist is rare and puzzling, too, Bothmer says.

Bothmer and Vandier both theorized that the red granite statue was made at Thebes, brought to Karnak, and separated in antiquity.  It was either broken during a war, as was the fate of many antique statues, or it was tossed out of the Temple of Amun by priests on a housekeeping binge.

Despite the priests’ contempt and the unfinished ears, the carving on the face is fine, Bothmer said, with eyebrow and eyelids well executed. “While the face of the (unbroken) seated statue (of Ny-user-ra) in Cairo has a brooding, almost sullen expression, the Rochester king appears to be direct, forceful, and somewhat haughty,” Bothmer said in 1980.

One plus one equals one,” Bothmer concluded.

Sources: Interview with Bernard Bothmer, 1988.  Interview with the director of the Cairo Museum, ca. 1980. Curatorial files, including articles in the New York Times and Time magazine                                                                 

Editor’s note: Docent Brayer is the author of Magnum Opus and the biography George Eastman, the latter to be issued in :paperback in honor of the 100^th anniversary of  Eastman.