Head of a Colossal Statue of Amenhotep III
Unknown · Reign of Amenhotep III, 1388-1349 BC
Two metres of pink granite, and only the head. The king wears the tall white crown of Upper Egypt with a cobra rearing at the brow and a false beard on his chin. The face is broad and serene, with long almond eyes that seem to be smiling, full lips and a small chin: the unmistakable features of Amenhotep III, recognisable even without an inscription. Step back and imagine the rest: a standing or seated figure well over ten metres high, the crown catching the sun above a temple court. The granite was quarried at Aswan, far to the south, and floated down the Nile on barges.
The head comes from Kom el-Hettan on the west bank of Thebes, the site of Amenhotep III's funerary temple, the largest ever built in Egypt, of which the two Colossi of Memnon are the surviving gatekeepers. Its courts were lined with colossal images of the king and of gods, and pieces of them have been found in museums across the world. The head belonged to Henry Salt, the British consul general in Egypt, whose second collection Charles X bought for the Louvre in 1826, on Champollion's advice, to found the museum's Egyptian department.
Did You Know? The head alone is taller than a person; the whole statue would have stood well over ten metres high.
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