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

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AN EGYPTIAN GRANITE PORTRAIT HEAD OF AMENHOTEP II, NEW KINGDOM, 18TH DYNASTY, CIRCA 1479-1397 B.C. OR LATER Carved from a mottled reddish granite, the head depicts a king wearing the tall Blue Crown, or *khepresh*, its surface originally stippled to suggest the pattern of studded discs and now worn to a soft granular texture. The crown rises to a rounded apex above a flat brow band, from which the uraeus emerges in high relief, the cobra's hood forming a broad disc against the forehead and its raised body coiling downward in a distinct vertical loop before the head strikes upward. Long straight cosmetic bands extend from the outer corners of the eyes toward the temples, framing almond-shaped eyes carved with sharply defined upper lids and a level gaze. The nose is straight and narrow, with subtle nostrils, above a small mouth with full, gently upturned lips set into a restrained smile. The chin is rounded and the cheeks smooth and youthful, the ears set high and pierced. The neck terminates in an ancient break. The head is mounted on a black square plinth. The features conform to the idealised royal portraiture developed under the Thutmoside kings of the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty, in which the ruler is shown eternally young, serene, and composed. The Blue Crown, worn here, was in this period increasingly associated with the king in his active, martial, and appearing-in-glory aspect, distinct from the White and Red Crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt and from the *nemes* headcloth of funerary and divine contexts. The prominent frontal uraeus with its looped body is characteristic of Eighteenth Dynasty renderings of the *khepresh* and signals the protective cobra goddess Wadjet, guardian of the king's person. The gentle smile, tapering brow, and narrow nose reflect the sculptural conventions of Amenhotep II's court and its close successors, when portraiture drew heavily on the model established under his father Thutmose III while softening the facial modelling toward a more youthful, almost adolescent, ideal. The choice of hard igneous stone is significant. Granite, quarried principally at Aswan, was reserved in the New Kingdom for royal and divine sculpture of consequence, its intractability signalling both the resources of the state and the permanence intended for the image. Statues of this material were produced in the royal workshops for temple contexts, where they served as enduring receptacles for the king's *ka* and as the physical presence of the ruler before the gods. The reddish tone of the stone carried its own solar associations, aligning the king with Ra. Portraits of Amenhotep II are known chiefly from his monuments at Karnak, Giza, and his mortuary complex at Thebes, where he presented himself as an athletic and vigorous ruler, celebrated in contemporary inscriptions for feats of archery and horsemanship. The qualifier "or later" in the attribution should be read as an acknowledgement that the Thutmoside facial type was revived and quoted in subsequent periods, and that granite royal heads of this idealised cast are occasionally found in Ramesside or later contexts reusing or emulating the Eighteenth Dynasty model. This head exemplifies the mature Thutmoside royal portrait in hard stone, where the sculptor's task was not to record likeness but to fix the king in a state of divine youth and composure. The pairing of the Blue Crown with the softened, smiling features locates the piece within the specific sculptural climate of Amenhotep II and his immediate circle, when the martial identity of the pharaoh was expressed through regalia rather than through the face itself. Dimensions: Height: 17 cm. Height on stand: 31.5 cm.

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