Ancient Egyptian god may have inspired Oscar design
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Rupert Wace, an antiquities dealer, connected a 2,700-year-old bronze statuette of the Egyptian god Ptah to the design of the Oscar statuette while researching its history in London.
The statuette once belonged to William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper publisher and friend of Cedric Gibbons, the art director who created the Oscar in 1928. Wace discovered Gibbons frequently visited Hearst’s home, which included a room dedicated to Egyptian artifacts.
While Gibbons never publicly stated his inspiration, Wace notes the resemblance between the statuette and the Oscar is striking, given their shared context. The Ptah figure dates to a period just before the Achaemenid Persian Empire conquered ancient Egypt. The statuette sold for an undisclosed price on the opening day of Frieze Masters, an art fair held in Regent's Park, London, from October 14 to 18 and attended by approximately 60,000 people.
