Egyptian Ostracon: Sketch of a Sparrow, c. 1470 BCE – Porcelain Art Mug

Ostraca were the scrap paper of ancient Egypt: flakes of limestone and broken pottery, picked up where they lay and drawn on without ceremony. This one carries a sparrow, painted in red ochre with a black beak and black legs, standing on a line the artist drew for it. It was made at Thebes during the joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, between about 1479 and 1458 BCE, on a piece of stone that fits in the palm of a hand.

Nothing about it was meant to last. It is a practice piece — the kind of drawing an artist makes to get a shape right before committing it to a tomb wall — and that is what makes it worth looking at. The hand is quick and unguarded. The bird is observed rather than copied: the round breast, the cocked tail, the small alert head. The same creature runs through the hieroglyphic script, where the sparrow sign stands in words having to do with smallness.

The flake is printed as it is, cut free of its photographic background, so the broken edge of the stone becomes the edge of the image. The red mark at the right is the museum's own accession number.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Artist's Sketch of a Sparrow, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, ca. 1479–1458 BCE. Limestone and paint, 6.6 × 10.6 cm. From Thebes, Upper Egypt. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1923, accession no. 23.3.7. Public domain (Open Access).

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.