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Cat. 17 Head of an Official, Middle Kingdom Cat. 18 Statuette of Osiris, Late Period Cat. 19 Statue of Shebenhor, Late Period Cat. 20 Fragment of a Head from a Statue of a King, Late Period Cat. 21 Statuette of Wesirnakht, Probably Macedonian Dynasty Cat. 22 Statue of Horus, Ptolemaic Period

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Cat. 20

Fragment of a Head from a Statue of a King


Late Period, Dynasty 30 (380–343 BCE)

Ancient Egyptian

Graywacke; 10.6 × 8 × 5.4 cm (4 9/16 × 3 1/8 × 2 1/8 in.)

The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Martin A. Ryerson, X120

This fragment of most of the right side of the face and forehead of a statue can be identified as a king by his striped nemes head cover and uraeus cobra on his brow. The head shows the pharaoh with a rectangular face, plump cheeks (the right now marked by a series of scratches), and high cheekbones. The lack of nasolabial lines to separate his cheek and nose, and his knobby but soft chin that sags on its underside, suggest an idealized youthful face. The inner corner of the remaining almond-shaped eye is canted down toward his nose. It is set in a thin rim without a cosmetic line. The concavity that suggests his eye socket is not pronounced between his eye and brow but is more evident toward the inner corner of his eye. The king’s brows are naturalistically rendered—they are only slightly outlined and very different than the raised and heavily outlined “plastic” style that gives eyebrows the appearance of having been applied to the face.[1] There is a pronounced triangle where the bridge of his nose meets the edges of his brows. The king’s small, slightly upturned nose with its straight bridge has small nostrils that flare only slightly. He has a rectangular philtrum and his full, pursed lips turn up in a smile. The left edge of his mouth has more deeply drilled detail than the right. What remains of his ear is very stylized, with a heavy, bulbous lobe and a vertical oval structure in front that represents the tragus. The face of the statue was sheared off the rest of the head and what is preserved of the back is nearly flat.1

Additional Views of Cat. 20

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Front of cat. 20.

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Back of cat. 20.

The king’s nemes head cover is indicated by the horizontal brow band, the tab in front of the ear, and most distinctly by the stripes that rise perpendicularly from the band. The uraeus sits low on the forehead, its body overlapping the brow band of the nemes. Most of the snake’s head is lost. Its coils are arranged in a horizontal loop forming a figure eight. As is common with royal statues of the Late Period, this figure does not wear a false beard.2

Date

This beautifully carved head has been assigned a date of Dynasty 26, which is often the default date for fine-quality, royal heads of the Late Period that lack an identifying inscription.[2] However, in recent years there has been considerable discussion of the art of the Late Period, especially the differences between sculpture from Dynasty 26 and Dynasty 30, in order to determine if, indeed, so much of this material should be assigned to Dynasty 26.[3] Russmann noted the difficulty in differentiating the art of the two dynasties, concluding that in Dynasty 30 “the overall effect … [of the] facial style was to render features that were already highly idealized as even more mannered and artificial.”[4]3

There are features of the Chicago head that argue for the later date of Dynasty 30. The most prominent is the depiction of the coils of the uraeus’s body in loops that form a single figure eight. Many art historians who work with this material have concluded that this configuration came into fashion in the reign of Nectanebo I, the first king of Dynasty 30.[5] The earlier style, a double figure eight, was known from the New Kingdom through Dynasty 29 but had disappeared by the reign of Nectanebo I.[6] Jack A. Josephson, however, disagrees with this dating criterion. He has assigned several heads with a double-figure-eight uraeus to the reign of Nectanebo II (the third and last king of Dynasty 30), noting that using a double- versus a single-figure-eight uraeus for dating is “questionable; it is likely that the double-loop configuration appears well into the Ptolemaic Period” and that “the use of the double-looped symmetrical uraeus does appear to be consistent on hard stone statues of Nectanebo II.”[7] Josephson’s theory has not met with universal agreement, however, and the dating criterion for the examples with double- and single-figure-eight loops remain accepted by most scholars.[8]4

Of the kings of Dynasty 30, only Nectanebo I and II (the other king of Dynasty 30, Teos, had a very brief reign) left a significant legacy of relief and sculpture.[9] Statues of Nectanebo I are characterized by a broad face with “voluminous cheeks”; an aquiline nose; slanting, almond-shaped eyes with thin rims; and a small mouth with thin lips.[10]5

Representations of Nectanebo II are characterized by a “broad heavy head set upon a short neck,” rounded cheeks, a “smiling mouth with lifted corners,” a small, snub nose, almond-shaped eyes, a “thin rectilinear swelling marking the eyebrow,” and an uraeus with a single, horizontal loop.[11]6

The Chicago head has similarities to sculptures of both Nectanebo I and II. Considering the uncertainty of some of the attributions, it may be prudent to place the head broadly within the reigns of both kings, rather than assign it more definitively to one of the two periods.7

Original Context

The Chicago face has been sheared off of the head, making it difficult to determine what type of statue it comes from. Although the face is small, only 10.6 cm in height, the height of the original head, when measured from the chin to the top of the nemes, may have been about 12 cm.[12] Very few royal statues of Dynasty 30 have survived intact, especially those made of hard, dark stone. Most depict Nectanebo II under the protection of the god Horus (see cat. 22 for the falcon god without a figure of the king).[13] Most of the other surviving sculpture of the period are heads that have been separated from their bodies. These are significantly larger than the Chicago head, ranging in size from about 22 to 41 cm, making them life-sized and larger.[14] A head of Nectanebo I that is smaller (6.5 cm with intact crown) than the Chicago statue has a back pillar, indicating that the king was shown standing or seated, which may have been the original context of the Chicago fragment.[15]8

Another possibility is that the Chicago fragment comes from a sphinx, which also have masklike faces with little individualizing detail.[16] Unfortunately, the possibility that the Chicago face is from a sphinx cannot be confirmed because the back of the head is lost; therefore, the telltale position of the tail of the nemes, whether hanging straight down, as for a standing or seated figure, or curved to lie on the lion’s back, cannot be determined.9

Provenance

The Art Institute of Chicago, by 1923.10

Publication History

Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 58 (ill.).
11

Entry by

Notes

  1. For the contrast between these two styles of brow, see Bernard V. Bothmer, Herman De Meulenaere, and Hans Wolfgang Müller, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period, 700 B.C. to A.D. 100, exh. cat. (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum, 1960), 5, pl. 5, fig. 11.
  2. Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 58. According to notes on the scholar comment form located in the object files in the Department of Arts of Africa at the Art Institute of Chicago, Robert S. Bianchi and Edna R. Russmann both looked at the head, noting that it “appears to date to Dynasty XXVI, or later” (Bianchi, note from 1991) and it is “definitely [a] 26th Dynasty fragment from a full statue” (Russmann, note from 1995). I thank Ashley Arico, Associate Curator of Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, for this information. The Brooklyn Museum’s files for Egyptian sculpture from the Late Period contain two pages on the head, with only the Allen citation and the comment “Date?” I thank Yekaterina Barbash, Curator of Egyptian Art at the Brooklyn Museum for checking the files.
  3. Bothmer, De Meulenaere, and Müller, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period, 89; Karol Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture of the Dynasties XXI–XXX (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1988). See also the comments of David A. Aston, “Dynasty 26, Dynasty 30, or Dynasty 27? In Search of the Funerary Archaeology of the Persian Period,” in The Theban Necropolis: Past, Present and Future, ed. Nigel C. Strudwick and John H. Taylor (London: British Museum, 2003), 18.
  4. Edna R. Russmann, ed., Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum, exh. cat. (London: British Museum, 2001), 247.
  5. Bothmer, De Meulenaere, and Müller, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period, 89; Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture, 92; Cyril Aldred, Egyptian Art in the Days of the Pharaohs, 3100–320 BC (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980), 226, 237.
  6. Bothmer, De Meulenaere, and Müller, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period, 89.
  7. Jack A. Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture of the Late Period, 400–264 B.C. (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1997), 18, 27–29; pls. 7b, 10a–c. Josephson tentatively dated the statues in pls. 7b, 10a–c to Nectanebo II (ibid., 27–28).
  8. For a critique of Josephson’s methodology and conclusions, see Herman De Meulenaere, review of Egyptian Royal Sculpture of the Late Period, 400–264 B.C., by Jack A. Josephson, Bibliotheca Orientalis 55, nos. 1/2 (January–April 1998): 124.
  9. Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture, 92.
  10. Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture, 79; Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture, pls. 2a, 3a–c, 9a–d. Josephson tentatively dated the statues in pls. 9a–d to Nectanebo I.
  11. Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture, 83; Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture, pls. 3d, 10a–c, 11a–c. Josephson tentatively dated the statues in pls. 10a–c and 11a–c to Nectanebo II.
  12. Myśliwiec notes that statues of Nectanebo II tend to be of a small scale. Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture, 83.
  13. On statues of Nectanebo I and II, see Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture, 70–71, 73. See also a basalt statue of a standing figure without a head published in Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture, pl. 3c, and also perhaps pl. 9d.
  14. Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture, pls. 8–11; Russmann, Eternal Egypt, 247.
  15. Bothmer, De Meulenaere, and Müller, Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period, 90–92, no. 73; pl. 69. The date of this statue has been debated. See Jack A. Josephson, “Egyptian Sculpture of the Late Period Revisited,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 34 (1997): 14–15; Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture, pl. 4c, for “Ptolemy X (?).”
  16. See images of sphinxes of Nectanebo I at Luxor in Myśliwiec, Royal Portraiture, pls. 81–84. See Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture, 9–10, for his assertion that sphinxes are “not individual portraits.”

How to Cite

Emily Teeter, “Cat. 20 Fragment of a Head from a Statue of a King,” in Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago by Emily Teeter and Ashley F. Arico, ed. Ashley F. Arico (Art Institute of Chicago, 2025), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593213/35.

© 2025 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

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