During the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period, a particular type of figurine representing a naked female began to appear. Modelled in the round and truncated at the knee, they are typically about 15cm long, and are adorned with jewellery and body decorations or tattoos. Their bodies are voluptuously sexual, with small breasts, high waists, flat abdomens, full hips and thighs, rounded buttocks, and often prominently demarcated pubic triangles, which sometimes show the vulvar cleft. Cowrie girdles (particularly related to the human female by their resemblance to the vulva) are often worn. The cowrie persisted as a protective amulet for females from Predynastic times through all of pharaonic Egypt, and its use continues to this day.
Jewellery such as necklaces, armlets, bracelets, and straps of beads are typical. Tattoos with diamond patterns similar to those found on khener dancers are common. Khener dancers performed a ritual dance in the nude, during which they exposed their genitals with high kicks and back bends. Their dance echoed the story of Hathor, the goddess of love and sexuality who exposed her genitals to rejuvenate her father, the God Ra, when he was despondent over the contentions of Horus and Set. Khener dancers with such tattoos were found buried at the mortuary temple of the Eleventh Dynasty king Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahri. They would have danced for his ka in the afterlife.
Previous theories
In her monumental volume Votive Offerings to Hathor (1993), Geraldine Pinch classifies the truncated figurines as ‘female fertility figurines’ and places them in her Type 1 category. Pinch recounts eight theories regarding their function that had been presented up to 1993. The first proposal, by Wiedermann in 1913, was that they were to function as ‘brides of the dead’, to provide the deceased man with sexual gratification for eternity. It was suggested that they were cut off at the knees to prevent them from running away. Even though this was later invalidated, the label lives on, and his theory frequently resurfaces. Pinch cites subsequent theories which proposed that they were dancers, divine mother goddesses, fertility talismans to help men beget children and for safe births for women, votives to the dead, votives to Hathor, toy dolls, and talismans to provide sexual gratification to both genders.
