Seated Statue of
Hatshepsut
Seated Statue of Hatshepsut,
ca. 1473–1458 B.C.; Dynasty 18; reign of Hatshepsut and
Tuthmosis III; New Kingdom
Egyptian; Western Thebes
Red granite; H. 65 3/4 in. (167 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1929, Torso lent by Rijksmuseum van Oudheden,
Leiden (L. 1998.80) (29.3.3)
Description
"This graceful, life-size statue depicts Hatshepsut in female
attire, but she wears the nemes headcloth, a royal attribute usually
reserved for the reigning king. In the columns of text inscribed
beside her legs on the front of the throne, she has already adopted
the throne name Maatkare, but her titles and epithets are still
feminine. Thus, she is Lady of the Two Lands and Bodily Daughter of
Re. On the back of the throne, part of an unusual and enigmatic
scene is preserved. At the left is the goddess Ipi, a protective
deity depicted as a pregnant hippopotamus with feline legs who wears
a crocodile draped across her head and down her back and carries
knives. This goddess was the protector of pregnant women and of
children and thus would have been associated with the reigning
queen. This mixture of attributes belonging to king and queen
suggests that the statue comes from the time when Hatshepsut was
making the transition from queen regent to coruler with her nephew
Tuthmosis III.
In the early 1920s the Museum's Egyptian Expedition excavated
numerous fragments of the statue near Hatshepsut's temple at Deir
el-Bahri in western Thebes. The torso, however, had been found in
1869 and was in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. A recent
loan has allowed the pieces to be reunited for the first time since
the statue was destroyed in about 1460 B.C." - MET
Copyright © 2001 The Metropolitan
Museum of Art - MET
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