ClassificationsAncient Egyptian Art

Cosmetic Palette with Gnostic Inscription

CultureEgyptian

PeriodPredynastic, Nagada II

Date3500-3350 BCE

MediumSchist

Credit LineCarlos Collection of Ancient Art

Dimensions13 1/4 x 4 in. (33.7 x 10.2 cm)

Object number2008.013.001

Label TextNo other object in the collection illustrates the extraordinary time span of Egyptian civilization as well as this unique artifact. It originally served as a cosmetic palette used to grind eye paint. Four thousand years later, sometime in the 2nd to 4th Centuries AD, it was reused and inscribed on one side with crosses and a magical Gnostic inscription.

Gnostic Christianity was a heretical movement popular in Egypt that combined early Christian beliefs with Greek philosophy and other religious traditions. The magical inscription cannot be translated and was probably the invention of a hermit Christian monk living in a desert cave. This palette may have been a chance find and presented itself as an ideal writing surface. These types of palettes are frequently found as burial offerings in the graves of men and women from the Predynastic Period.

This palette was originally in the collection of Natacha Rambova, the wife of silent film idol Rudolph Valentino and the granddaughter of Heber C. Kimball, one of the early leaders of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Rambova had a lifelong interest in religion, and she collaborated with the Egyptologist Alexandre Piankoff on his translations of the golden shrines of Tutankhamen and other texts from the Valley of the Kings. She clearly recognized the historic importance of this piece when she saw it and decided to add it to her collection.
Exhibition HistoryMCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, 2008 - Present
Published ReferencesSotheby's New York, Antiquities (December 5, 2007), 139, number 104.
MCCM Newsletter, March - May 2008.
Michael C. Carlos Museum: Highlights of the Collections (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2011), 14.
Campbell Price, Pocket Museum: Ancient Egypt (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2018), 22.

ProvenanceEx coll. Natacha Rambova (1897-1966), California. Ex coll. Professor Donald P. Hansen (1932-2007), New York, New York. Purchased by MCCM from Sotheby's New York, December 5, 2007, lot 104.

Status

On view

Collections