Group Statue of Two Kneeling Men Presenting a Stele with a Hymn to Ra
Unknown · Reign of Ramesses II, 1279-1212 BC
Two men kneel side by side, wearing kilts, duplex wigs and small pointed beards, and together they hold up a round-topped stele in front of them. At the top of the stele is carved the boat of the sun god Ra, and below it a hymn to Ra in hieroglyphs. The limestone still keeps much of its paint, and the statue is only thirty-one centimetres high, made for a tomb chapel rather than a temple court. Look at the pierced ears and the careful rendering of the wig strands, small signs of the fashions of the day.
Stelophorous statues of this kind were placed in the upper part of tombs at Thebes so that the owner could greet the rising sun for eternity; here the gesture is shared by two men, probably father and son. The inscription mentions Ramesses the Second, which dates the group to his long reign in the thirteenth century before Christ. The statue belonged to the collection of the British consul Henry Salt and was purchased by the French crown in eighteen twenty-six, one of the founding acquisitions of the Louvre's Egyptian department.
Did You Know? Both men wear a small goatee and have pierced ears, a fashion of the Ramesside age that the sculptor recorded with care on a statue barely thirty centimetres high.
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