Pre-Dynastic Ivory Fertility Figure

This is the inception of a new series of original sketches drawn by me from the collection of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California. This series follows a book I'm reading and goes through the different types of materials artifacts may be made from. The first material was bone:

RC 551

The first artifact in this series was an Pre-Dynastic female figure made of Ivory.  The original is 8cm in length and the sketch was done on a 2:1 scale (approximately double the size). 

Figures from this period are highly stylized, thus the elongated body and prominently highlighted pubic region known as the "public triangle" denoting this as a figuring that was related to feminine fertility. 

Around the world during this period the female figure was a popular subject of artwork. Most of them tended to be rotund, pregnant women, but Egypt deviated from this convention. We find figures such as these throughout Egyptian history, making this one of the most common types of votive statuettes. Even in later periods we find these figures broken, as we do here. Some have speculated that they were part of a fertility ritual where the figures were ceremonially broken, perhaps to ensure fecundity in humans, husbandry, or the harvest. 

Who the figure is supposed to depict is unknown. If we had context or provenance then we might be able to determine whether this figure may have been dedicated to a specific goddess, but we can assume from her popularity during the Pre-Dynastic era that this figure would likely have represented Hathor, the goddess of love, sexuality, fertility, and beauty. The material this is made from might also give us a clue that this figurine was meant to portray an ideal of beauty because ivory mimicked the pale complexion valued as a high standard in Egyptian beauty. Females were painted with yellow or white pigment for skin color in Egyptian art while males are almost exclusively red.