Hatshepsut Statues on Special View
Famous Egyptian Sculptures Relocated at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Stone portraits of ancient Egypt's Queen Hatshepsut have found a temporary home in the Sackler Wing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Two granite statues of ancient Egypt's Queen Hatshepsut (reigned ca. 1479-1458 B.C.), who ruled as a pharaoh, are on view temporarily in the Sackler Wing, home of the cult Temple of Dendur (ca. 15 B.C.), at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. They'll return to their nearby gallery this Fall when its renovation is completed. The Eighteenth Dynasty monarch has been in the news as of late. Pending the results of DNA testing, evidence strongly suggests that a mummy now in Cairo's Egyptian Museum is that of the controversial ruler.
Who Was Hatshepsut?
Hatshepsut was the principal queen of her half-brother, Pharaoh Thutmose II (r. 1492-1479 B.C.). Upon his untimely death, she became regent for Thutmose III (r. 1479-1425 B.C.), her stepson and nephew. For reasons still unclear, she adopted the title of pharaoh, making her the young prince's senior co-ruler. Sculptures of Hatshepsut soon depicted the queen in male regalia. Despite the relatively peaceful and prosperous empire that he inherited from his stepmother-aunt, Thutmose III ordered the dismantling of all male representations of Hatshepsut some two decades after her demise. Thousands of the statues' fragments, discovered in two pits near Hatshepsut's funerary temple by The Metropolitan Museum of Art's scholars in the early years of the Twentieth Century, were painstakingly reassembled.
The Queen's Funerary Sculptures at The Met
The Colossal Sphinx of Hatshepsut (Early 18th Dynasty, joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, 1479-1458 B.C.) is a statue whose immense proportions lend it an air of sheer overwhelming majesty. It was most likely one of a pair of protective works that were placed symmetrically on the lower terrace of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, Djeser-djeseru ("Holy of Holies"), in the western Theban site of Deir el-Bahri. The recumbent leonine sculpture is an artistic hybrid. Its head is that of Hatshepsut adorned with the characteristic nemes or male royal headdress and false ceremonial beard. The bull's tail is indicative of ancient Egyptian royalty's powerful procreative ability. In many ancient Near Eastern cultures, the fusion of different species' anatomical features into one composition imbued the image symbolically with magnificent and mythical strength.
Accompanying The Metropolitan Museum's sphinx is Hatshepsut as Female King (Early 18th Dynasty, joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, 1479-1458 B.C.), a life-size seated stone sculpture of the female ruler as pharaoh. The work is an interesting composite of both male and female aspects. Hatshepsut wears a sleeveless sheath dress and jewelry traditionally reserved for women. Yet her nemes headcloth, surmounted by a uraeus or sacred cobra, is the usual attire of an ancient Egyptian king. This serene and sensitive portrait of the queen exudes a sense of authority usually reserved for male pharaonic sculpture. Interestingly, the statue was placed out of view in a chamber within Djeser-djeseru.
Source:
- Roehrig, Catharine H., Renée Dreyfus and Cathleen A. Keller (eds.). Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh (exh. cat.). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005.
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