Face-off
Relief from the tomb of Maya – Saqqara, Egypt
The relief reminds us of large images on the walls of the monumental graves of wealthy Egyptians. The details on the relief suggest that we are dealing with part of an image from the 18th or 19th Egyptian dynasty, ca. 1549-1190 BC. If you look closer, however, it turns out the relief is not actually from ancient Egypt, but a modern forgery. Yes, alas, this relief in the collection of Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) is indeed a fake.
And, it’s already clearly visible here: The measurements of the body and the shape of the face give away the hand of the forger. Ancient Egyptian artists designed their depictions based on a grid, so that certain points on a figure could be arranged along one single line. This is not the case in the forged relief.
For example: the line of the left shoulder is much higher than that of the right shoulder, while in true Egyptian art, they are supposed to be in line (fig. 3). The line of the right shoulder touches the neck on a low point, making the neck way too long.
Or take the eyes, for example…