DOI: 10.33547/Aegypt2025.21
The Late Predynastic-Protodynastic golden statue of a man or god
by: Joris van Wetering 
in: M.A. Jucha, J. Dębowska-Ludwin, G. Bąk-Pryc (eds), Per vias Aegypti et Orientis Medii. Studies Presented to Krzysztof M. Ciałowicz, Kraków: Institute of Archaeology Jagiellonian University, Archaeologica Foundation, Profil-Archeo Publishing House, 2025, pp. 223-235.
Abstract: In their article ‘Golden Figures from Tell el-Farkha’ from 2007, Marek Chłodnicki and Krzysztof Ciałowicz discuss the two golden statues found at Tell el-Farkha and compare them, among others, to a golden statue bought in 1907 or shortly thereafter by C.T. Currelly (today in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto). To better understand the provenance of this statue which was bought in the vicinity of Luxor, a search of C.T. Currelly’s documentation and autobiography was undertaken as well as the correspondence of W.M.F. Petrie and J. Quibell.
Based on the nature of the statue and the location of the aquisition, Nubt (Petrie’s Naqada site, and De Morgan’s Toukh site) seems to be a very likely candidate for the site at which this statue may have been found. More or less concurrent with C.T. Currelly’s acquisition of the golden statue, museum records (Egyptian Museum Cairo, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) indicate that either through building activities or illegal excavations, numerous objects flowed into the antiquities markets of Luxor and Qena, seemingly coming from Nubt. The archaeological history of the Naqada Region from 1901 to about 1910 is discussed to better understand the context of these objects, and to provide a foil for understanding the golden statue.