The materiality of the damage in the faience figurine corpus from late Middle Bronze Age Egypt (1800–1550 BC)

The article aims to analyse the materiality of damage in ancient Egypt, taking as case study the corpus of faience figurines in the late Middle Bronze Age (c. 1800–1550 BC). Starting from a corpus of more than 1100 miniatures and 151 different archaeological contexts, the paper discusses the type of damages or breaks, dividing them in three main types: 1. chipping or erasure/deterioration; 2. loss of a targeted body part through breakage; 3. smashing. A remarkable number of cases shows that damages (chipping and erasure) affected very specific body parts, connected with the most important human/animal senses: mouth (taste/speak/make noise), nose (smell), eyes (sight), and ears (hearing). The breaking mainly involved the head and legs, two points of articulation commonly subject to specific attention in the rituality of ancient Egypt (also mirrored in the practice of mutilating some hieroglyphic signs). A few more figurines present a single break crossing the body, effectively dividing it into two parts or halves. The paper also focuses on the type of fractures, which seem to follow, in the vast majority of the cases, a regular and systematic base. Questions on the recycling of fragmented elements and the missing or refitting parts of the broken figurines are taken into consideration. The examples drawn from the corpus represent significant evidence for suggesting a voluntary anthropic action for their breakage and damage. Since the vast majority of faience figurines were found in funerary contexts, the fragmentation seems to be connected with ritual practices and dialectic between death and life, especially for the protection of the deceased.