Bau and Baru – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

I’ve always been a bit of a history wonk. Every now and then I see something about or from an ancient civilization that transforms my view of the past.

I had always thought of Egyptian art as being literally and emotionally stylized to death. Within a tomb, statues of the deceased were often placed for protection in a sealed room called a "serdab." The ancient Egyptians believed that the "ka" or spirit of the deceased could inhabit a statue in the serdab, peering into the tomb chapel through a slit in the wall Food for the ka was placed on an offering table nearby.

One such statue is this painted limestone representation of a couple – whose names are Bau and Baru – seated on a cube-like chair. They lived at the time of the 5th dynasty of Egypt's Old Kingdom period – about 4,500 years ago. The husband, Bau, wears a short, curly wig, broad collar, and knee-length kilt. He sits with his hands in his lap, his right hand holding a handkerchief and his left palm open. Baru sits with her left hand flat on her lap and her right arm around her husband’s waist. She wears a full wig, broad collar, and tightly-fitting white sheath dress. The chair is painted pink in imitation of granite.

What so impresses me about this statue is how natural and unstylized it seems to be. Bau and Baru seem to me people not essentially different from the people whom I meet every day in amy own life, with their joys and their sorrows and their love for one another.