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SEKHMET STATUES FROM THE REIGN OF AMENHOTEP iii IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM and A FORMERLY UNCATALOGUED HEAD FRAGMENT: A REASSESSMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2018

Tara Draper-Stumm
Tara Draper-Stumm*
Affiliation:
8 Lime Tree Walk, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 1YH, UK. Email: taradraperstumm@icloud.com
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Abstract

Beyond the borders of Egypt, the British Museum has the largest collection of granodiorite statues and fragments of statues of the goddess Sekhmet produced in the reign of Amenhotep iii (c 1390–1352 bc; eighteenth dynasty). With so much new material being uncovered in recent years at the site of Amenhotep iii’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan in Luxor (Egypt), a reassessment of the British Museum statues was inevitable. The British Museum statues are an ideal sample group for study, offering variations in type, proportions, stone colouration, decoration and state of finish. The group also includes a formerly uncatalogued head fragment with an unusual uraei crown, which relates to surviving examples found at the Mut Temple at Karnak and at Kom el-Hettan in Luxor.

Information

Type
Papers
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 98 , September 2018 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
© The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2018 

INTRODUCTION

As Jason Thompson has recently pointed out: ‘it is often the undisplayed items … [in museums] that serve as the best raw material for future research. All major and most minor collections contain potential for new insights.’Footnote 1 This is certainly true of almost all major collections of Egyptian antiquities around the world, where space constraints inevitably mean that no matter how many artefacts the visitor sees in the galleries, there will be many more hidden away in the storerooms. Both the objects on display and those locked away have the potential for providing new information. A case in point are the British Museum’s granodiorite statues of the goddess Sekhmet from the period of Amenhotep iii. Ongoing excavations and discoveries at the funerary temple of Amenhotep iii at Kom el-Hettan, in Luxor, where hundreds of Sekhmet statues and statue fragments have been uncovered in recent years, and at the Mut Temple at Karnak, where many Sekhmet statues remain in situ, have led to a reassessment of these statues.Footnote 2

Four of the statues – two standing and two showing the goddess seated on a throne – are currently on display in the British Museum’s Sculpture Gallery on the ground floor (fig 1).Footnote 3 They attract a great deal of attention from visitors, who are fascinated by these exotic-looking creatures, half-woman, half-lioness. The leonine features hint at this ancient goddess’ fierce nature. Sekhmet, whose name means ‘powerful’, was a solar goddess, daughter of the sun god Re and consort of the god Ptah. She was regarded as the bringer of destruction, but also as a healer who could protect against illness and plague.Footnote 4 Her ‘power was used to protect the king’, and she was also symbolic of the king’s ‘own power in battle’.Footnote 5 As well as the distinctive leonine features, the statues usually have a sun disc and cobra uraeus crowning the head, or there is a notch (or groove) atop the head where a separate sun disc could be attached. The standing type holds a papyrus sceptre in the left hand and an ankh (symbol of life) in the right, while the seated examples hold an ankh in the left hand. Other common details include a collar necklace and a traditional wig beneath a stylised leonine mane, which frames the face.

Fig 1

(left to right) British Museum statues EA 76, EA 57, EA 62 and EA 80 in the Sculpture Gallery. Photograph: © Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

THE SEKHMET STATUES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

The Sekhmet statues currently on display in the British Museum are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as the museum holds as many as thirty-nine near complete or fragments of Sekhmet statues. A handful are on loan to museums in the UK and abroad, but the rest remain in store due to inevitable space constraints.Footnote 6 The group includes thirteen standing statues, eleven seated, thirteen statue fragments, two previously uncatalogued head fragments and two bases with feet from standing statues that may be from Sekhmet statues.Footnote 7 This is the largest collection of this statue type outside Egypt.Footnote 8 Not only does the museum hold both standing and seated examples, but the museum’s group of statues and fragments are extremely varied, displaying a range of stone colours, proportions and detailing, as well as inscriptions and evidence of reuse by later pharaohs. They, therefore, have the potential to be an excellent sample group for further analysis.

Sekhmet statues were among the first Egyptian antiquities to be acquired by the British Museum, arriving as part of a group of antiquities received from the French with the signing of the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801 and donated to the museum by King George iii in 1802.Footnote 9 In the following decades, further statues of the goddess, many unearthed by the pioneer Egyptologist Giovanni Belzoni (1778–1823), were acquired from Henry Salt (1780–1827), the British consul-general in Egypt, who sold a large collection of Egyptian antiquities to the museum in 1823.Footnote 10 In 1840, the upper part of a Sekhmet statue was donated by William Richard Hamilton, who had negotiated the handover of the French antiquities to the British under the Treaty of Alexandria.Footnote 11 In 1843, two seated statues came to the museum via the family of Lord Belmore, who had acquired them from Belzoni while travelling in Egypt.Footnote 12 Indeed, the Society of Antiquaries of London may have inadvertently played a small but significant part in some of the inscribed Sekhmet statues and fragments making their way to the British Museum, for the Society had sent a request to Salt to collect antiquities with hieroglyphic inscriptions, as well as drawings or casts of inscriptions, which might assist Dr Thomas Young with his researches into hieroglyphs and the Rosetta Stone.Footnote 13

The accepted consensus is that these statues, along with many others of the gods and colossal statues of the king, were made in preparation for Amenhotep iii’s Sed festival or jubilee, celebrated in year 30, and placed in his funerary temple on the west bank at ancient Thebes (Kom el-Hettan) (figs 2 and 3).Footnote 14 Sekhmet statues may also have been commissioned for the Mut Temple at Karnak, or were moved there, possibly from the reign of Ramesses ii (c 1279–1213 bc; nineteenth dynasty) onwards (fig 4).Footnote 15 The British Museum almost certainly has statues excavated from both sites, with the French statues originating from the Mut Temple. In the Description de L’Égypte, a multi-volume series of engravings and descriptions based on the French expedition’s researches in Egypt, published between 1809 and 1829, the French described uncovering ‘plus de quinze statues … elles ont la plupart des têtes de lion’ at the Mut Temple, and plate 48 in volume 3 of Description de L’Égypte appears to correspond to British Museum statues EA 57 and EA 88.Footnote 16 It is difficult to say with absolute certainty which of the British Museum Sekhmets come from which site, since their provenance was generally not noted down at the time of their excavation, nor did it tend to be recorded when they arrived at the museum. However, Belzoni did note that he and Salt found ‘standing and sitting lion-headed statues’ at Kom el-Hettan, though he does not make a similar declaration regarding statues he found at the Mut Temple.Footnote 17 We could, therefore, theorise that the standing statues in the British Museum that are clearly associated with Salt may have originated from Kom el-Hettan.Footnote 18

Fig 2

The Colossi of Memnon in Luxor, Egypt. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2016.

Fig 3

Reconstructed statues in the peristyle court of Amenhotep iii’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2011.

Fig 4

Sekhmet statues in the outer court of the Mut Temple. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2011.

A PREVIOUSLY UNCATALOGUED HEAD FRAGMENT

One interesting mystery among the statues of Sekhmet at the British Museum is a previously uncatalogued head fragment currently in the storerooms (fig 5). This head fragment, recently catalogued and numbered EA 90784, comprises the upper part of a Sekhmet head and ears above the level of the eyebrows. It is highly unusual in that it is topped with a crown of uraei, with two additional uraei at the front, rather than the usual sun disc with single uraeus.Footnote 19 It measures 38cm wide and 33cm in height, which would suggest that it corresponds to the larger type of Sekhmet statue, which generally has a facial width of 38cm or more.Footnote 20 While the Sekhmet statues usually averaged approximately 2m tall (or roughly four cubits), these larger statues were at least 3m tall.Footnote 21

Fig 5

Recently catalogued Sekhmet head fragment in the British Museum (EA 90784). Photograph: © Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

The fragment has recently been restored and photographed, but when it was originally seen in the storerooms it was attached to a stone or concrete block and had two numbers (possibly excavation or collection numbers) painted onto the forehead – ‘105’ painted in white and ‘194’ in red below it.Footnote 22 No information relating to these numbers or the origin of the fragment could be uncovered in the museum archives. While it is not known where or when the fragment was uncovered and entered the museum’s collection, the unusual uraei crown may suggest its origin was Luxor, as it seems to correspond to similar examples found at both the Mut Temple and Kom el-Hettan. A large seated statue of Sekhmet with uraei crown was uncovered at the Mut Temple by Margaret Benson and Janet Gourlay in the 1890s in the second court of the temple, where it can still be seen today (figs 6 and 7).Footnote 23 This statue, which was later re-inscribed for Sheshonq i (945–924 bc; twenty-second dynasty), was conserved and restored by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) in 2013. The upper torso of another example of this larger type of Sekhmet with uraei crown (inventory number 6500) was found at Kom el-Hettan, in the vicinity of the peristyle court and hypostyle hall in 2006 (fig 8).Footnote 24

Fig 6

Restored statue of Sekhmet with uraei crown at the Mut Temple, in Karnak, Egypt. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2016.

Fig 7

Side detail of restored statue of Sekhmet at Mut Temple. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2016.

Fig 8

Fragment of Sekhmet statue with uraei crown no. 6500, found at Kom el-Hettan, Egypt. Photograph: © Copyright The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project/Antoine Chéné.

CONCLUSION

It is possible that these larger statues were originally grouped together at Amenhotep iii’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. They may also have been placed in front of the pylons at the Mut Temple, which may be suggested by a depiction of the Mut Temple precinct in the Ramesside period tomb of Khabekhnet (TT2) at Deir el-Medina, and they may have had a role to play during the Festival of Drunkenness, which took place at the Mut Temple from the New Kingdom onwards.Footnote 25 Dr Betsy Bryan has also suggested that these larger Sekhmet statues may have been paired with similarly proportioned statues of Amenhotep iii and Queen Tiye found at the Mut Temple in the second court and which had been altered, re-inscribed and re-used in later periods.Footnote 26

Whatever their later use may have been, it seems clear from their size and unusually elaborate uraei crowns that these were a special group within the vast corpus of Sekhmet statuary, which, if surviving numbers are a guide, numbered well over 700 statues. British Museum fragment EA 90784 is, therefore, a rare and valuable addition to our overall understanding of the Sekhmet statues of Amenhotep iii. Further study of this and other Sekhmet statues in the British Museum, along with those in other museums and private collections, may eventually unlock the key to why Amenhotep iii commissioned so many statues of this goddess, and what their original function was.

ABBREVIATIONS & BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbreviations

ASAE

Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte

ARCE

American Research Center in Egypt

BM

British Museum, London

EA

Egyptian Archaeology

KMT

KMT A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt

MDAIK

Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo

PSBA

Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology

Primary sources

1822. A Catalogue of the Valuable Collection of Antiquities of Mr John Belzoni, in Egypt, Nubia, &c which will be sold by Auction by Mr Robins; at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly on Saturday, the 8th of June, 1822 at Twelve o’Clock, London

1809–1811. Description de L’Égypte ou Recuil Des Observation et Des Recherches qui ont été Faite en Égypte Pendant l’Expedition de L’Armée Française, vols I & III, L’Imprimerie Impériale, Paris

BM, Birch Slips, Egyptian Saloon Catalogue, 517–53 and 574–608.

Footnotes

1 Thompson Reference Thompson2015, 209.

2 For details of the excavations and extensive finds made at Kom el-Hettan, see Haeny Reference Haeny1981, 90–8; Sourouzian Reference Sourouzian2002, 36–7, Reference Sourouzian2003, 34–43, Reference Sourouzian2004, 10–17, Reference Sourouzian2006, 21–4, Reference Sourouzian2010, 285–93, Reference Sourouzian2011, 71–92; Stadelmann Reference Stadelmann2002, 470–3; Sourouzian and Stadelmann Reference Sourouzian and Stadelmann2003, 425–46, Reference Sourouzian and Stadelmann2004, 171–236, Reference Sourouzian and Stadelmann2006, 401–45. Over 100 Sekhmet statues and statue fragments, as well as a fine, seated statue of Amenhotep iii, were among the many finds uncovered during excavations there in early 2017 alone. Dr Nairy Hampikian, lecture at Sekhmet Omnipresent Conference, Luxor (Egypt), 24 Mar 2017; Griffiths Reference Griffiths2017, 8–9. For excavations and finds at the Mut Temple, see Fazzini and Peck Reference Fazzini and Peck1983, 16–23; Bryan Reference Bryan2007, 32–43; Fazzini Reference Fazzini2011. For conservation of Sekhmet statues at the Mut Temple, see Fazzini Reference Fazzini2005, 87. Sekhmet statues have been uncovered elsewhere in Luxor and at various sites in Egypt: for references to these, see Gauthier Reference Gauthier1920, 179; Kozloff and Bryan Reference Kozloff and Bryan1992, 225; Lurson Reference Lurson2004, 103–10.

3 EA 517 is also on display nearby and another seated statue (EA 68) is to be found in the Enlightenment Gallery on the ground floor of the British Museum.

4 Allen Reference Allen2005, 47; see also Kozloff Reference Kozloff2006, 36 and 43, for discussion of Sekhmet statues as protection against plague.

5 Wilkinson Reference Wilkinson2003, 181. Sekhmet was known as the ‘Eye of Re’, an avenging force who destroys the enemies of the sun god. The story of Sekhmet as the ‘destroyer of mankind’ is the most famous tale associated with the goddess and is found in The Book of the Cow of Heaven. It describes how the god Re, angered by humanity plotting against him, sends his daughter, Sekhmet, to slaughter mankind, before relenting. For a translation of the tale, see Lichtheim Reference Lichtheim1976, 197–9.

6 British Museum Sekhmet statues are currently on loan in Truro (EA 85), Glasgow (EA 52 and EA 87), Newcastle (EA 71) and Ipswich (EA 84). Two further statues (EA 37 and EA 63) are on loan to the Walters Art Gallery, in Baltimore, USA, and EA 522 is on loan to the Världskulturmuseerna, in Stockholm, Sweden. Further statues, including EA 60, EA 65 and EA 519, have formed part of UK and international touring exhibitions or short-term loans in recent years. For further information, see individual statue entries on the British Museum website: https://britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx (accessed 15 Jul 2018).

7 For a history of the British Museum statues, see Draper-Stumm Reference Draper-Stumm2012. The author would like to thank Marcel Marée, Assistant Keeper of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, for bringing to her attention that two statue fragments (EA 522 and EA 90587) were not included in her MA research. The British Museum accession numbers are as follows: seated statues: EA 16 (inscription), 37 (inscription), 57 (inscription), 60, 62, 63 (inscription), 65 (unfinished), 68 (inscription), 88 (inscription), 517 (inscription), 518 (inscription); standing statues: EA 41, 45, 49, 50, 53, 69, 71, 72, 76, 80, 84, 519, 520; statue fragments: EA 52, 77 (head and torso, probably from a seated statue), 79 (head and torso, probably from a seated statue), 85 (head and torso, probably a seated statue), 87 (head and torso, probably from a seated statue), 89 (feet and plinth of a standing statue with inscription), 95 (legs and plinth of a standing statue, probably a Sekhmet), 118 (feet and plinth of a standing statue, probably a Sekhmet), 521 (head and torso, probably from a seated statue), 522 (head and torso, probably from a seated statue), 599 (head and torso, probably from a seated statue), 898 (head fragment); 90587 (lower-leg fragment, possibly from a Sekhmet statue); there are also two formerly uncatalogued head fragments, EA 90784 (upper part of a head of a larger Sekhmet statue with uraei crown) and EA 90785. For further information on these statues, see the British Museum website: https://britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx (accessed 15 Jul 2018).

8 The author has undertaken research at the University of Exeter, under the supervision of Dr Robert Morkot, looking at all granodiorite Sekhmet statues dispersed from Egypt, mainly from the early 19th century onwards. More than 200 Sekhmet statues and statue fragments have been identified in museums and private collections around the world to date; for details of Sekhmet statues, their dispersal from Egypt and locations, see Newberry Reference Newberry1903, 84–7; Lythgoe Reference Lythgoe1919, 3–6 (Met); Porter and Moss Reference Porter and Moss1972, 262–8; Davies Reference Davies1992, 50–2; Scott Reference Scott2008, 225–7 (San Antonio); Oliver Reference Oliver2014, 102, 190–1 (Boston).

9 For a list of the Egyptian antiquities included in the Treaty of Alexandria, see Bierbrier Reference Bierbrier1999, 111–3.

10 Manley and Rée Reference Manley and Rée2001, 207–8; see also Moser Reference Moser2006, 101–4; for a first-hand account of Salt’s excavations in Egypt and collecting, see D’Athanasi Reference D’Athanasi1836, 23–5; 50–2; for details of Salt’s relationship with Belzoni, see Mayes Reference Mayes2006, 152–5.

11 The Hamilton statue has the British Museum accession number EA 599. In the original list of objects, known as the Birch Slips after the antiquarian and Egyptologist Samuel Birch (1813–85), who painstakingly catalogued the British Museum’s Egyptian collections, this statue was said to have come ‘from Karnak’; see BM, Birch Slips, 574–608, 200. For Hamilton’s involvement with the acquisition of the French statues, see Parkinson Reference Parkinson2005, 28–9. Hamilton wrote observations of his travels to Egypt, published in 1809, and included a drawing of a Sekhmet statue; see Hamilton Reference Hamilton1809, pl 2.

12 The Belmore statues have British Museum accession numbers EA 517 and 518. These were either a gift or purchased from Belzoni and, according to Belzoni, were found at Karnak; see Belzoni Reference Belzoni1820, 250. British Museum accession number EA 517 has an inscription of Sheshonq I (c 945–924 bc), while EA 518 is inscribed for Amenhotep iii, with the Sekhmet epithet ‘Lady of the Two Acacias’; see James Reference James1970, 4. British Museum accession number EA 517 was described in the Birch slips as having been restored by ‘Mr Bonomi’, Joseph Bonomi the Younger (1796–1878). See BM, Birch Slips, 517–553, 3, 7.

13 Manley and Rée Reference Manley and Rée2001, 65. This may explain why, despite Salt having acquired many Sekhmet statues, and some in good condition, that he also included an inscribed, though broken, plinth with feet from a standing Sekhmet statue (EA 89), within his collection. For a similar example, see also British Museum accession number EA 91 – a broken plinth and feet with an inscription to the goddess Maat – also thought to be from Henry Salt’s collection.

14 Johnson Reference Johnson2001, 74–5, 89; see also Bryan Reference Bryan1997, 57–9; Kozloff Reference Kozloff2012, 122–9.

15 Gauthier Reference Gauthier1920, 178–80. For a background history of the Sekhmet statues and their possible function, see Yoyotte Reference Yoyotte1980, 49–50; Germond Reference Germond1981, 177–80, 239–40; Fazzini Reference Fazzini1996, 134–6; Bryan Reference Bryan1997, 57–66.

16 Description de L’Égypte 1809, I, 279; see also Description de L’Égypte 1812, III, pl 48. James and Bierbrier suggest that EA 37 and EA 68, both of which are restored from broken parts, are also probably from the French group: see James Reference James1970, 1–3; also Bierbrier Reference Bierbrier1999, 111.

17 Belzoni Reference Belzoni1820, 292; a catalogue of the sale of statues from Belzoni’s collection, in 1822, also describes the standing statues of Sekhmet as coming from the temple ‘at the Back of the Colossi’, Kom el-Hettan; see A Catalogue of the Valuable Collection of Antiquities of Mr John Belzoni… 1822, 5, lot 4.

18 There is some evidence to support this theory: Colonel Fitzclarence, who saw some of the statues Belzoni excavated at the Mut Temple at Salt’s house in Cairo, described them as being seated statues. See Fitzclarence Reference Fitzclarence1819, 435. Further circumstantial evidence comes from the diaries of American traveller John Lowell, who mentions taking a standing statue of Sekhmet from the ‘Memnoniam’ on the west bank at Luxor in 1835, which was in contrast to two statues ‘of a sitting posture’, which he had acquired from the Mut Temple at Karnak – the two seated statues are now in the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston, Massachusetts. See Berman Reference Berman2015, 38–9.

19 Another example of a Sekhmet statue with a double uraei is in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, accession number 247. Although the upper section of this statue is broken, it does not appear that this statue was meant to have a full uraei crown, as in the British Museum fragment.

20 See also British Museum statue EA 16 for similar facial proportions.

21 Sourouzian and Stadelmann Reference Sourouzian and Stadelmann2006, 439; Richard Fazzini and Mary McKercher, lecture at the Sekhmet Omnipresent Conference, Luxor, Egypt, 24 March 2017.

22 The author is extremely grateful to Marcel Marée, Assistant Keeper of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, who kindly organised cataloguing, restoration and photography of this head fragment (EA 90784).

23 Benson and Gourlay Reference Benson and Gourlay1899, 41.

24 Sourouzian and Stadelmann Reference Sourouzian and Stadelmann2006, 440, pl XXIII d. The author is extremely grateful to Dr Hourig Sourouzian of the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep iii Temple Conservation Project for permission to reproduce a photograph of this statue, as well as her encouragement and support of this research.

25 Khabekhnet was a craftsman in the royal workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina during the 19th dynasty. For a discussion of the scene of the Temple of Mut in tomb TT2, see Cabrol Reference Cabrol1995, 52–3, pl 5a; see also Porter and Moss, Reference Porter and Moss1960, 6; for a discussion of the Festival of Drunkenness, see Bryan Reference Bryan2014, 106, fig 6.22; Richard Fazzini and Mary McKercher, lecture at the Sekhmet Omnipresent Conference, Luxor, Egypt, 24 March 2017.

26 Bryan Reference Bryan2010, 72.

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Fig 1 (left to right) British Museum statues EA 76, EA 57, EA 62 and EA 80 in the Sculpture Gallery. Photograph: © Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 1

Fig 2 The Colossi of Memnon in Luxor, Egypt. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2016.

Figure 2

Fig 3 Reconstructed statues in the peristyle court of Amenhotep iii’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2011.

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Fig 4 Sekhmet statues in the outer court of the Mut Temple. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2011.

Figure 4

Fig 5 Recently catalogued Sekhmet head fragment in the British Museum (EA 90784). Photograph: © Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

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Fig 6 Restored statue of Sekhmet with uraei crown at the Mut Temple, in Karnak, Egypt. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2016.

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Fig 7 Side detail of restored statue of Sekhmet at Mut Temple. Photograph: Tara Draper-Stumm, 2016.

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Fig 8 Fragment of Sekhmet statue with uraei crown no. 6500, found at Kom el-Hettan, Egypt. Photograph: © Copyright The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project/Antoine Chéné.