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In this model workshop, two men are butchering a cow while a third man, near the cow's hindquarters, holds a fan with which he was fanning a fire, perhaps cooking blood pudding made from the blood collected when the cow's throat was slit. At the opposite side of the model, women (with lighter skin than the men in the butcher scene) grind grain for making bread and beer; another woman tends a brazier, perhaps cooking the mash, while a man is shown perhaps sieving the beer at a sieve at the cow's back. Five stoppered jars of beer sit in a basket between the man sieving and the woman at the brazier.
Such model workshops were placed in Middle Kingdom tombs so that the model figures could continue working for the deceased in the afterlife. These models made of painted wood and cloth may descend from individual Old Kingdom stone statues of workers, which were deposited in tombs.

Princesses

Name: Model Workshop

Material: Wood, gesso, linen, pigment

Size:
Length: 35.56 cm (1 ft 2 in)
Width: 20.32 cm (8 in)
Height: 11.43 cm (4.5 in)

Date: c. 2200 BCE,
First Intermediate Period, Dynasty 9

Place of Origin: Sedment el-Gebel (the necropolis of Herakleopolis just south of the Fayyum), Egypt

Location: Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, Illinois

Source, Registration#, and Publication:  Oriental Institute Museum, 11495. Teeter, Emily, Treasures from the Collection of the Oriental Institute, Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2003. p. 35-36

Janet H. Johnson

Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Egyptology