Head and Shoulders from an Osiride Statue in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2010

Head and Shoulders from an Osiride Statue

Period: New Kingdom

Dynasty: Dynasty 18

Reign: Joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III

Date: ca. 1479–1458 B.C.

Geography: From Egypt, Upper Egypt; Thebes, Deir el-Bahri, Senenmut Quarry, in hole, MMA 1926–1928

Medium: Limestone, paint

Dimensions: H. 100 cm (39 3/8 in); w. 115 cm (45 1/4 in)

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1931

Accession Number: 31.3.156


Description:
This bust comes from one of the colossal Osiride statues of Hatshepsut that originally stood over 15 feet (4.6 m) high. The statues were attached to the square pillars of the uppermost portico of her temple at deir el-Bahri. Hatshepsut holds a crook and flail across her chest and once wore the White Crown of Upper Egypt indicating that this fragment belonged to a figure positioned on the southern side of the portico. The head of another figure (31.3.159) wears the Double Crown and would have been on the northern side.

These colossal figures were architectural accents rather than freestanding statues and were carved from the same limestone blocks that were used to construct the colonnade. Some twenty years after Hatshepsut's death, the statues were hacked off of the pillars and the fragments were thrown into two large depressions in front of the temple where they were discovered by the Museum's excavators in the early twentieth century.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/544445