Isis Embracing Nectanebo II
Unknown · Reign of Nectanebo II, c. 359-341 BC
The goddess Isis reaches out to hold a king by the shoulder. She wears her tripartite wig under the vulture headdress and the crown of cow horns enclosing a sun disc, with a broad collar across her chest. The king beside her wears the tall white crown of Upper Egypt and a matching collar. Traces of red and yellow paint survive on the limestone. Walk round to the other face of the block, where the king appears again in the white crown with the straight false beard, holding a white mace. Columns of hieroglyphs give his full royal titulary.
The block is the top of a door jamb from the temple that Nectanebo the Second built at Saqqara in front of the Serapeum, the underground burial place of the sacred Apis bulls. Nectanebo, who reigned from three hundred and fifty nine to three hundred and forty one BC, was the last native pharaoh, and his reign saw a burst of temple building before the Persian conquest. Auguste Mariette found the relief in one of the rooms of the temple during his excavations, and it entered the Louvre in eighteen fifty two.
Did You Know? Nectanebo the Second was the last native Egyptian to rule as pharaoh; after him came the Persians, then Alexander the Great.
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