TEFAF New York Will Show a 3,300-Year-Old Egyptian Stele and a Once-Doubted Goddess Bust
A limestone stele tied to Pharaoh Thutmose IV is arriving in New York with a second object that has its own dramatic paper trail: a 2,500-year-old bust of an Egyptian goddess that was initially dismissed as a likely fake. Together, the two antiquities will be shown by David Aaron at TEFAF New York, which runs May 15–19.
The stele, carved 3,300 years ago, came from the collection of Ben Weider, who received it in 1964 from the United Arab Republic of Bodybuilding Federation. It later changed hands at Iegor Auctions in Montreal, where it sold for 56,000 CAD, or about $38,000. David Aaron is now offering it for £450,000 ($608,000).
Its historical appeal is inseparable from the ruler it depicts. Thutmose IV is associated with the Dream Stele narrative, in which he legitimized his claim to power through a revelation involving the Sphinx at Giza. That kind of royal self-fashioning has long made such monuments central to the study of ancient Egyptian authority, not just its iconography.
The companion work, the Greywacke Goddess, was dated to the reign of Amasis II and first appeared at auction in South West England in 2022. Its shiny surface, intact nose, and murky provenance led specialists to suspect it was a modern fabrication. Over the course of a year, however, David Aaron’s antique specialists authenticated it.
Restorers removed layers of wax and pigment, revealing stone that material analysis linked to Wadi Hammamat, a major mining region in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. The nose, meanwhile, was identified as an 18th-century restoration, in which a craftsman had removed a section of stone from the back and reattached it to the front for visual effect. Researchers also traced the bust’s ownership back to a 1923 sale at Hotel Drouot in Paris, where it sold for 2,000 francs, roughly $2,400 today.
David Aaron has priced the Greywacke Goddess at £1.5 million ($2 million). In a market where provenance can alter meaning as much as value, the pairing underscores how scholarship continues to shape the fate of antiquities long after they leave the ground.
