Statue of Senusert III in the Brooklyn Museum

This well preserved statue shows the standard details one would expect in a statue of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and it also shows some fascinating and unique details in the King’s facial features.

Seunusert sits on a throne which bears the King’s names and titles. Beneath his feet are the nine bows which represent the traditional enemies of Egypt. He wears the nemes headdress, the cobra of which is now mostly broken away. Between his legs is shown a bull’s tail, which represents the Pharaoh’s power. His kilt is also the traditional garment of Egyptian royalty.

What is different about this statue, and the statues of other Middle Kingdom rulers is the careworn expression of the face. Senusert’s face seems to convey the heavy burdens of ruling his country and makes the King seem almost weary from the problems he faces.

This Pharaoh was one of the Middle Kingdom’s ablest rulers. He ruled as far south as the second cataract of the Nile, where he built a fortress named “Powerful is Khakaure”. A stela from this reign clearly states that this marked his southern boundary. In the eight year of his reign he sent an army south to suppress the kushites.

Senusert built a pyramid at Dashur, which was found robbed and empty by de Morgan in 1894.

Head of a Female Sphinx in the Brooklyn Museum

This head of a Dynasty 12 female sphinx was found at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli in Italy in 1771 and made its way to the Brooklyn Museum. It is thought that this sphinx was of a Queen of Amenemhat II’s, but this is not certain.

The face of this carving does not have the careworn features so common in the statues of Dynasty 12 kings and has rather heavy eyebrows and  a pointed chin that lends a certain softness to the piece.

This head had already been damaged before it got too Tivoli. The inlaid eyes were probably made of metal and were long ago stolen. The chin was repaired by the Romans using stone that is of a slightly different color. If you look carefully at the chin in the photograph you can see where the new piece of stone was added in ancient times.

Quite a number of Egyptian artifacts have been found at Hadrian’s Villa. A small artificial lake surrounded by statues that were originally from Egypt, or are a mixture of Egyptian and roman art is the centerpiece of Hadrian’s retreat from the cares of being Emporer. A nearby spot at the villa was called the Canopus and was a replica of the sanctuary of the god Serapis in Alexandria. The Canopus was built as a memorial dedicated to one of Hadrian’s favorites, a young man named Antinous who drowned in the Nile, was deified and then worshipped throughout the Roman empire.

Sit_Hathor_Yunet

In 1914 the British School of Archaeology discovered the treasure of Princess Sit-Hathor-Yunet at el Lahun. This find consisted of jewelry, cosmetic jars, mirrors and other similar things of great beauty. Part of this find is now in the Cairo Museum and part of it is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The princess was probably a daughter of Senwosret II and she seems to have lived into the reign of Amenemhat III. Her tomb consisted of a shaft down to an antechamber, a burial chamber and an offering chamber. A recess next to the deceased’s sarcophagus held her canonic jars while in the antechamber was a recess that contained caskets that held oil jars and jewelry. When thieves broke into the tomb they scattered the blocking of the doorway at the bottom of the shaft in such a way that they covered the recess that contained Sit-Hathor_Yunet’s jewelry resulting in the thieves never realizing it was there. As a result, they left behind some of the the most beautiful jewelry in ancient Egypt for us to enjoy today.

In figure 1 the casket on the right contained oil jars (the small alabaster jars in the lower right of the picture), while the casket on the left contained, among other things a stunning diadem adorned with gold feathers that is now in the Cairo Museum. This casket also contained the necklace shown in figure 2. This necklace was made up of drop-shaped beads made of gold, carnelian and green felspar at the bottom of which is gold pectoral that bears the name of Senwosret II on it. The two hawks represent the god Horus while the kneeling figure below represents hundreds of thousands of years of life.

The claw necklace in figure 3 was found with the beads that made it up scattered within the remnants of the jewelry casket. The Metropolitan museum’s staff painstakingly restrung the amethyst and gold beads and reattached the claw and clasp.

The wristlet in figure 4 bears an inscription that reads “The good god, lord of the two lands, Maat-en-ra (Amenemhat II), given life” on the slide that was used to fasten the wristlet in place.

In a recess in the burial chamber four human-headed canonic jars were found (figure 5). Canonic jars usually contain the internal organs of the deceased after said organs were removed as part of the mummification process.

The Models of Meketre

During the Metropolitan Museum’s 1919 to 1920 season at Deir el-Bahri one of the most fascinating discoveries in the history of Egyptology was made. The excavation team was clearing an area outside the tomb of Meketre (late 11th Dynasty) when they came upon an small chamber carved below the walkway leading to the tomb. Inside were dozens of wood models of scenes of daily life from butchering cattle to recording the amounts of grain being stored in a silo. There were also numerous model boats which form a valuable record of travelling the Nile in the Middle Kingdom.

At the time of the discovery a fair amount of rocks had fallen from the chambers ceiling and a large number of the models had to be repaired and it took three days of photgraphing and drawing diagrams before all of the models were removed. The Metropolitan’s team used the photos and hand drawn plans of the chamber to do the exacting work work of repairing and conserving the models. Today the models are divided between the Cairo Museum and the Met, here in New York.

The boat shown here is being rowed northward (against the prevailing wind). The large libation vessel in front of the seated firgure of Meketre may indicate that the seated figure is a statue of the nobleman and that this may represent a trip to Abydos as part of the funerary rituals. In this context, the figure of Meketre is likely a statue of him. The figure standing in front of Meketre with his arms reverently crossed may be his son or a priest.

In figure 3 we see cattle two cows that have been killed and are being butchered. At the top of the steps a number of cuts of beef have been hung up to dry as part of preparing them to be eaten.

In figure 4 we see grain being delivered to a silo. In the foreground scribes record the number of sacks of grain being brought in (on white-washed wooden boards?) while in the background workers have climbed the stairs to dump the sacks of grain into the silo itself.

Last, and most definately not least, were two beautiful wooden statues of servant girls. (figure 5). The lady pictured here carries a bird in her right hand and balances a basket of food stuff on her head. The statue is made up of several pieces of wood that have been carefully put together and then painted so that the joins of the individual pieces cannot be seen.

Montuemhat in the Brooklyn Museum

Montuemhat was the Fourth Prophet of Amun and served as the mayor of Thebes at the end of the 25th Dynasty and the begining of the 26th. He had three wives (Neshkhinsu, Shepenmut and Wadjerenes) and several sons.

During Montuemnat’s life the 25th Dynasty Pharaoh Tanuatamun attempted to regain Lower Egyptian territories that had been lost to the Assyrians. He marched north and defeated Necho I (who had been placed on the Lower Egyptian throne by the Assyrians). The Assyrian King, Assurbanipal attacked Egypt (about 663 B.C.) and chased Tanuatamun back to Nubia and then looted Thebes. When the Assyrians left, Thebes became an independent political entity that was led by Montuemhat and the God’s Wife, Shepenwepet II (who was a sister of the 25th Dynasty King Taharka).​

His tomb (TT34), which is near the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, is one of the largest burial places built for a nobleman at Thebes. It has more than fifty rooms and is famous for the quality and style of the reliefs on its walls. These carvings have an “archaizing” style which harkens back to the art work from as far back as the Old Kingdom, but contains touches that reflect the art of the 25th and 26th Dynasties. Note, for instance, the unusual portrayal of the scribe in the picture above, which harkens back to Old Kingdom art, but yet the scribe’s seating is shown like nothing in Old Kingdom art. Other examples of archaizing in this tomb include a relief of a woman nursing a child that was copied from TT69, the tomb of Menena.

Several reliefs from this tomb are (like the one pictured above) are in the Brooklyn Museum.

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