Item Missing

Item Missing

I had admired her a week ago, in a corner at the foot of a staircase leading to the Egyptian antiquities (the “North” staircase). I wanted to see her again, to reread what was written of her. I was fascinated by the fact that Champollion himself had acquired the statue in Egypt and brought it back from his 1829 expedition—“I bring to the Louvre the most beautiful bronze that has ever been discovered in Egypt,” he wrote—and also by the fact that he was mistaken about its identity. He thought the little bronze statue inlaid with gold depicted Karomama the wife of Pharaoh Takelot II, while it is actually a daughter of Osorkon I, a priestess of Amon-Ra, king of the gods. Karomama, wife of Takelot II, daughter of Osorkon: I couldn’t remember. I wanted to read more closely the letter in which Champollion explained his reasoning, and behold at leisure the fine statue that I had only glimpsed in passing the first time. But the young woman had disappeared; the display case had been stripped bare; my statue was missing (Sully, room 337) Like those books in the Bibliothèque Nationale, she had vanished without a trace.