Queen Tiye and Amenhotep III
Unknown · Reign of Amenhotep III, c. 1388-1349 BC
Queen Tiye stands almost complete in green glazed steatite, while beside her only a fragment of her husband, King Amenhotep the Third, remains: his left arm hanging down, with a bracelet on the wrist. The queen wears a close fitting dress patterned like the feathers of a bird, a heavy enveloping wig, and on her head the vulture headdress topped by a tall pair of plumes and three cobras. In one hand she holds a fly whisk. Look at the small, firm face with its slightly downturned mouth, a feature that makes her portraits recognisable across many materials. Hieroglyphs give the names and titles of both king and queen.
Tiye was a commoner by birth who became the great royal wife of Amenhotep the Third and the mother of Akhenaten, and she appears beside her husband more often than any earlier queen. The Louvre's figure of Tiye arrived in eighteen twenty six with the Salt collection; the fragment of the king was recognised and acquired only in nineteen sixty two, and the two were reunited on a single base. The surface was deliberately hammered in places, damage that may date to the upheavals after her son's reign.
Did You Know? The queen survived almost whole while her husband the king was reduced to an arm and a bracelet, which is not the usual way round in Egyptian art.
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