Handle for a Model Bird Trap

Art Historical Context

This delicate ivory handle, crafted around 1550–1295 B.C. during Egypt's New Kingdom (Dyn 18), once belonged to a model bird trap—a miniature replica of everyday hunting tools placed in tombs to ensure the deceased's sustenance in the afterlife. Measuring just 14.5 cm long, it exemplifies the Egyptians' meticulous attention to provisioning the next world, where models of farms, workshops, and hunts symbolically provided eternal abundance. Bird trapping was a vital activity along the Nile, supplying food and feathers for rituals, making such models both practical in concept and spiritually esse...