Head of Nectanebo I
Unknown · Reign of Nectanebo I, c. 379-361 BC
A king's head in pink granite, over half a metre high, wears the tall white crown of Upper Egypt with the uraeus cobra rearing at the front. The face is broad and smooth, with large eyes under gently curved brows, a straight nose and a full, calm mouth. The hard stone has been polished so that the light slides across the cheeks. Behind the head rises the back pillar, and it is here that the sculptor carved hieroglyphs: the Horus name and the Two Ladies name of the king, which identify him as Nectanebo the First.
Nectanebo the First founded the Thirtieth Dynasty in three hundred and seventy nine BC after driving off a Persian attack, and he began the great programme of temple building that his grandson Nectanebo the Second continued. His portraits combine the idealised royal face of earlier periods with a new softness and fullness that the Ptolemies would inherit. The head was bought by the Louvre in nineteen seventy two by pre-emption at a public sale, the right of the French state to step in and claim a work of art at auction.
Did You Know? The king's name survives not on his face but on the back pillar, where his Horus name and Two Ladies name are carved.
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