AN EGYPTIAN GRANITE PORTRAIT HEAD OF AMENHOTEP II, NEW KINGDOM, 18TH DYNASTY, CIRCA 1479-1397 B.C. O

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN GRANITE PORTRAIT HEAD OF AMENHOTEP II, NEW KINGDOM, 18TH DYNASTY, CIRCA 1479-1397 B.C. OR LATER Carved from a densely mottled red and black granite, the head depicts the king wearing the *khepresh*, the tall bulbous crown known as the Blue Crown or war crown, its swelling profile rising above a narrow fillet at the brow. The uraeus emerges at the centre of the forehead, its coiled body rendered in low relief with the raised hood and striated tail articulated with care. The face is broad and full, with almond-shaped eyes cut in shallow relief beneath softly modelled brows that follow the natural arc of the orbital ridge. The nose, though abraded at the tip, retains its aquiline bridge; the mouth is small, closed, and set in the faint, upturned expression conventional to royal portraiture of the mid-18th Dynasty. The ears are set high and pierced. The neck is finished as a tenon, indicating that the head was worked separately for insertion into a composite statue or a shrine niche. The identification of the sitter rests on the combination of the Blue Crown, the youthful and rounded facial modelling, and the distinctive smiling mouth associated with representations of Amenhotep II and his immediate successors. The *khepresh* itself, worn from the reign of Thutmose IV onward with increasing frequency, carried martial and coronation associations, and its use in royal sculpture signalled the pharaoh in his role as living Horus and defender of Egypt. The uraeus at the brow, the cobra goddess Wadjet, marked the wearer as the legitimate holder of the double kingship and the protected earthly incarnation of divine authority. The choice of granite is not incidental. Hard stones of this class, quarried at Aswan and worked with copper and abrasives at considerable labour, were reserved for royal and high divine commissions. The reddish variety visible here, sometimes termed rose granite, carried solar associations and appears in monumental sculpture, obelisks, and sanctuary architecture from the Old Kingdom onward. Its use for a head of this scale, intended for insertion into a larger composite figure, indicates a commission of significant standing, whether royal workshop production of the 18th Dynasty itself or a later pharaonic revival looking back to the classic idiom of the Thutmoside kings. The facial type here, with its full cheeks, gentle smile, and idealised youth, belongs to the sculptural language established under Thutmose III and refined under Amenhotep II, in which the ruler is presented not as an individual likeness but as an eternal, divine incarnation of kingship. The rounded modelling of the crown and the softness of the features distinguish the type from the sharper, more austere portraits of the earlier 18th Dynasty and from the later, more mannered images of the Ramesside period. The "or later" qualification in the attribution reflects the well-attested practice, particularly during the Kushite and Saite revivals, of returning to 18th Dynasty prototypes as models of legitimate and canonical kingship. Height: 9cm Belgium Private Collection 1954 Acquired through British Trade Thence by descent This head exemplifies the Thutmoside idiom of royal portraiture in hard stone, in which the king is presented as a serene, eternally youthful embodiment of divine rule rather than as a specific historical individual. Its interest lies in the union of a demanding material with a portrait type that became, for later dynasties, the touchstone of what a pharaoh should look like.

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