Museum Pieces - Diorite bust of Horemheb

Photocredit: Nicholson Museum

Diorite bust of Horemheb

Collection: Nicholson Museum: Stone Artefacts, Ancient Egyptian
Object Category: Sculpture - Bust
Name/Title: Fragmentary statue of the pharaoh Horemheb as a kneeling scribe
Media: Stone - diorite
Measurements: 45.5 h/l x 40.0 w x 26.0 d cm, 147 kg
Acquisition Credit Line: Donated by Sir Charles Nicholson 1860
Museum Number: NMR. 1138

Production:

Place: Ptah Temple, Memphis, Egypt
Date: 1330-1320 BC

Description:

The figure wears a very fine garment with pleated sleeves and collar at base of the throat. Almost certainly Horemheb from his pre royal career.

History Notes:

Description and Function (Author: Dr Sophie Winlaw)

There are no inscriptions on the surviving section of this statue (including the narrow back pillar - an area which is usually inscribed with the subject's name). However, the identity of this individual can be determined through an examination of his facial features, the distinctive style of sculpture, the clothing and the wig. The long unstructured wavy wig is commonly worn by scribes who are usually represented in statuary as seated figures with crossed legs and in many cases papyrus scrolls on their laps (the fold of skin of our piece below the breast is suggestive of either a seated or squatting figure).

Scribes form a well respected professional class who are literate - unlike the majority of ancient Egyptians - so for this man to be represented as a scribe it reflects his high social status. This is also reflected by the style of wig and the garment he wears - types which were worn by high officials of the late 18th and early 19th dynasties (1550-1213 BC). Scribes are also protected by the god Thoth - the ibis headed god of writing and knowledge.

Many of the scribal statues depict the subject as being bare-chested but in this case he wears a distinctive type of robe which is draped loosely over his upper arms. The facial features are very distinctive, especially the shape of the eyes and the fullness around the jaw line and cheeks (representative of the Amarna Period). This statue has been carved, smoothed and polished with great precision and there would have been few officials who could have afforded a statue of this quality.

Searching for Sesostris

A new French exhibition presents what is known about the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Sesostris III, writes David Tresilian in Paris

Not as famous as his New Kingdom successors Ramses II or Tutankhamun, and not responsible for the kind of grand building projects that immortalised his Old Kingdom predecessors Khufu and Khafre, builders of the largest of the Great Pyramids at Giza, the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Sesostris III was nevertheless one of the country’s most important rulers, becoming a kind of symbolic embodiment of ancient Egyptian kingship.

However, until recently it has been difficult to disentangle fact from fiction in inherited accounts of the pharaoh’s accomplishments, with modern historians tending to see the list of achievements attributed to Sesostris III by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, for example, as either invented or a composite of actions taken by many different rulers.

According to Herodotus, writing in the long second book of his Histories dedicated to ancient Egypt, Sesostris, an unusually war-like ruler, sailed down the Arabian Gulf with a fleet of warships, subduing coastal tribes as he did so. Later, he led campaigns in Asia, defeating the Scythians, and even led Egyptian armies into southern Europe, defeating sundry armies in Thrace.

“It is a fact,” Herodotus writes, “that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent,” indicating that Sesostris and his armies reached the far side of the Black Sea. “I noticed this myself before I heard anyone else mention it… and found that the Colchians remembered the Egyptians more distinctly than the Egyptians remembered them.”