OLD KINGDOM, 6TH DYNASTY, CIRCA 2300-2181 B.C.

This carved fragment of relief once depicted three male standing figures facing left on a narrow register line; the presence of the third figure may be deduced from the end of the folded cloth in his left hand, as is the case in the two main figures. Both men wear identical close-fitting wigs or short hair, and a flaring triangular kilt tied with a prominent knot. The bodies are painted the typical dark reddish-brown used for young males, and the kilts are outlined in the same red paint. Most likely these men represent members of the family of the tomb owner, whose name is not known, processing towards a larger-scale figure of that individual. Two stylistically similar reliefs originally in the Diniacopoulos collection have been adduced by Piacentini to probably have derived from the same tomb as this example. The other two fragments show figures in fuller hairstyles moving in the opposite (right-facing) direction; they bear food offerings and young animals (calf, oryx, and ibex). She has provided a likely date within Dynasty 6 for all three reliefs, based on the facial features and elongated feet. An origin from Giza or Saqqara is likely, though difficult to prove without any inscriptional evidence.

The relief was collected by Vincent and Olga Diniacopoulos during the middle of the 20th century. Vincent was born in Constantinople, and later studied at the collège classique. Hélène Olga Nicolas, daughter of a French administrator for the Suez Canal project, was born in Cairo. She studied at the École du Louvre. The couple met in Paris, and prior to Second World War they were already established antiquities dealers, counting the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as clients. In 1951 they emigrated to Canada where they established Ars Classica, a gallery of Antiquities and European and Canadian paintings on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal. Twenty-two crates of artworks were sent from France, six from Syria and twelve from Cairo (p. 20 in J.M. Fossey and J.E. Francis, The Diniacopoulos Collection in Québec). It is not known exactly when Diniacopoulos acquired the relief, but an archival photo from 1965 shows it on display at the École Geriard-Filion in Quebec.