Sphinx Dedicated to Princess Ita, Daughter of Amenemhat II
Unknown · Middle Kingdom, Twelfth Dynasty, circa 1930 to 1850 BC
A recumbent sphinx of dark stone, nearly sixty centimetres long, broken and restored but still bearing a hieroglyphic inscription. The museum wonders whether it is a female sphinx, since the dedication names a woman: the princess, the king's daughter of his body, his beloved, Ita, possessor of veneration. Ita was a daughter of Amenemhat II, a pharaoh of the Twelfth Dynasty who reigned in the nineteenth century BC. Look at the lion's body, the remains of the double crown on the head, and the hieroglyphs carved on the base.
What makes the sphinx remarkable is where it was found: not in Egypt but at Qatna, a great Bronze Age city in central Syria, in the temple of the goddess Nin-Egal, during the French excavations of the nineteen twenties. It was given to the Louvre in nineteen twenty-nine. How an Egyptian princess's sphinx reached a Syrian temple is debated. It may have been a diplomatic gift, a sign of Egyptian influence in the Levant during the Middle Kingdom, or an object that arrived centuries later as plunder or trade and was rededicated by the kings of Qatna. Either way it shows how far Egypt's monuments travelled.
Did You Know? A sphinx made for an Egyptian princess ended up in a temple in Syria, hundreds of kilometres from the Nile, where its origin is still debated.
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