New Kingdom Sculpture: Art, Style, and Culture

CHAPTER 40
New Kingdom Sculpture
Betsy M. Bryan
1 Introduction
By the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty the Ancient Egyptians had been making
statuary for more than two millennia. It would thus be naı
¨ve to describe the sculpture
of the New Kingdom as simply the result of iconographic and stylistic principles
established at the dawn of civilization. Any serious student of Egyptology knows that
the Egyptians utilized representational art in ways similar to all cultures, including
modern ones, and, therefore, the choices made by artists reflected time-sensitive
societal organization. The act of statue creation could compress erudition, current
religious notions, elite fashion trends, chosen physical traits, and artistic style into
a highly sophisticated image of a ruler or a non-royal person. Statues likewise could
display the imagery of the past in style or fashion and thereby create associations
between contemporary kings and elites and their forerunners. New Kingdom sculpture,
therefore, acknowledged the art from which it was born and sought to update it for the
needs of contemporary culture and taste.
The features of the reigning king adorned all elite statues during most centralized
eras of ancient Egypt, and the New Kingdom was no exception (Seidel 1980;
Wildung 1982). Thanks to the changes in royal images from reign to reign, a stylistic
chronology of New Kingdom sculpture is largely possible and can also assist in
sequencing statue types in the absence of texts. Sculpture, being the product of
artisans who worked in contact with both priests and royal officers, was adorned
with textual identifiers and short or long texts that would have been supplied to the
artists by the patrons or their representatives. The combination of the statue with the
inscriptions communicated a larger message than either did alone, and in the New
Kingdom statues bore lengthy texts far more often than earlier. In the New Kingdom
many new types of statuary were invented that added to the communicative aspect of
sculpture, and the texts that they carried included commemorative and religious
inscriptions in addition to offering invocations. As such, statuary often functioned
in the manner that two-dimensional monuments had traditionally done, e.g., temple
stelae and tomb and temple inscriptions. The function of individual statues within
cultic settings was, however, extended even further through their poses and
A Companion to Ancient Egypt Edited by Alan B. Lloyd
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-15598-4

placement, such that statues might have interactive roles, both receptive and
performative. Seated sculptures of both royal and non-royal personages might thus
be fashioned to receive offerings, as in a tomb or temple sanctuary; likewise kneeling,
standing, and striding statues might suggest eternal cult activity by the dedicant. The
discussion below will provide a chronological overview of royal and elite New
Kingdom statuary in its cultural context and will seek both to describe and interpret.
2 The Eighteenth Dynasty
to the Reign of Thutmose I
The beginning of the New Kingdom presented challenges of every type to the new
Ahmosid dynastic family following the expulsion of the Hyksos. Probably among the
more pleasant demands on the kings was the revival of temples installed with statues
of Ahmose, Amenhotep I, and Thutmose I. At the beginning of any new era large-
scale art production surely strained the resources of trained artisans to carry out the
work, and the early Eighteenth Dynasty was likely no exception. The limited remains
from the reign of Ahmose indicate that his efforts were significant in Abydos and
Karnak where artisan workshops existed already, but elsewhere production appears to
have been of inconsistent style and quality. For example, Vivian Davies observed that
statues of Ahmose and Amenhotep I dedicated on Sai Island in northern Sudan were
likely the work of local artisans betraying Nubian stylistic preference. (Davies 2004)
At the Buhen Temple the king’s additions were added in crudely incised relief,
suggesting an absence of highly trained Egyptian craftsmen. Edna Russmann recently
pointed out that Ahmose’s style at Abydos differed from that at Karnak due to the
archaistic tendency at the latter temple, where the early Twelfth Dynasty style
remained the standard model (Russmann 2005). At Abydos Ahmose’s monuments
owed more to the late Second Intermediate Period, whose style was visible on the
numerous stelae produced there during that era. Yet, the fragments of Ahmose’s
relief, as retrieved by Stephen Harvey, suggest that the Abydos monuments required a
crew of artisans with a high level of training, and it is possible that the existing
craftsmen were supplemented by others (Harvey 2004).
Ahmose’s face from a limestone life-sized statue with the white crown (private
collection) has extremely large very slightly oblique bulging eyes set in a broad rounded
face (Romano 1976). The brows are plastic and highly stylized. The damaged mouth is
clearly smiling and not ungenerous. The face on a shabti (British Museum EA 32191;
figure 40.1) is more heart-shaped, but the finely incised features are similar, and the
mouth is carefully defined with the shape seen on later Thutmosid faces. Russmann
identified the origins of the highly idealized Thutmosid style in the shabti face of
Ahmose and in some of the non-royal Theban statues from the late Seventeenth and
early Eighteenth Dynasties, and she noted their correspondence with royal and non-
royal Theban coffins of the same era. (Russmann 2005) Yet, as she also commented,
other styles surfaced during this period until the Thutmosid type was well developed,
perhaps by the reign of Thutmose II, but certainly in that of Hatshepsut. Alongside the
delicate idealized face of Amenhotep I on his Karnak reliefs, an individualizing style
914 Betsy M. Bryan

depicting Amenhotep I appeared in his Osirid statuary from Deir el-Bahri, where a
large and fleshy nose protruded from a heavy face with a thin horizontal mouth (British
Museum EA 683). The Osirid type may have offered a nod toward Mentuhotep II’s
Deir el-Bahri sculptures, yet faces on earlier rishi coffins and late Seventeenth Dynasty
royal coffins, such as the gilded one of Queen Ahhotep (CG 28501), may have been
another source of the alternative facial type (Roth 2002). Those features were more
summary, but the broad prognathous facial shapes, large noses, and thin mouths are
very evocative of the more carefully modeled features of Amenhotep I. The colossal
statues of Thutmose I came close to the Thutmosid idealized facial type and wander far
from the Deir el-Bahri faces of Amenhotep I. Thutmose I has a long nose that broadens
at the its base with a thicker and broader mouth than his predecessor – whether in
statuary or relief – and is slightly smiling. The eyes are naturally arched and very wide
open, as seen on the one well preserved example, CG 42051 (Bryan 2002; Russmann
2005; figure 40.2). The breadth of the face beneath the eyes is similar to the Ahmose
statues but with the more prominent cheek bones so typical of the Thutmosid faces.
The statues of Thutmose II are either fragmentary or dedicated by Hatshepsut and
cannot be properly evaluated for distinctive features (Dreyer 1984), yet by the time of
Hatshepsut’s regency the tentative elements of portrayal had given way to a strongly
Figure 40.1 Shabti of Ahmose. Limestone. British Museum EA 32191. Courtesy Trustees of
the British Museum.
New Kingdom Sculpture 915

identifiable model that was only subtly tweaked during her kingship and that of
Thutmose III up to the reign of Thutmose IV.
Russmann pointed to new royal facial features and additional statue poses and
attributes for female images as innovations of the early New Kingdom (Russmann
2005). The relationship between faces on funerary statues and coffins may have resulted
from the deployment of readily available artisans from Western Thebes to work on a
broad range of monuments, perhaps crossing artistic forms as a result. For example,
female figures shown with the left leg advanced were not uncommon in two dimen-
sional representations of the late Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period,
but, other than as wooden statuettes (CG 495 and 797) (Borchardt 1930), were not
commonly produced in statuary until the beginning of Dynasty Eighteen. The artisans
of such wooden funerary statuettes may have been well positioned to craft these early
New Kingdom striding sculptures. As Russmann noted, however, the new poses suited
the newly expanded visibility of women in Egyptian elite culture and soon were made in
every size and material.
Figure 40.2 Facial detail from an Osiride of Thutmose I. Sandstone. Temple of Karnak. CG
42051. Courtesy Supreme Council of Antiquities.
916 Betsy M. Bryan

During the reigns of Ahmose, Amenhotep I, and Thutmose I and II, the following
royal statue types are attested: seated wearing white crown and Sed-festival robe:
Ahmose, Amenhotep I, and Thutmose II (inscription posthumous); Osirid:
Amenhotep I, Thutmose I; seated wearing the nemes: Thutmose I (fragmentary);
Thutmose II (fragmentary); group with deities: Thutmose I (upper half restored
post-Amarna); kneeling: Thutmose II (inscribed and attributed). Sphinxes (one with
human hands) are attributed to Amenhotep I. This brief list of statue types is almost
certainly under-representative, since Hatshepsut and Thutmose III dismantled and
altered so many early Eighteenth Dynasty monuments at Karnak and Deir el-Bahri.
The life-sized examples from Egypt and Nubia (Ahmose, Amenhotep I, Thutmose II)
depict the king in the most ancient royal portrait type – that of the king in jubilee or
coronation robe wearing the white crown (Davies 2004; Dreyer 1984). This combin-
ation, seen also on the Second Intermediate period Karnak statue of Merhotepre
Sobekhotep (Davies 1981), recalls the Nekhen statues of Khasekhem that underlined
his Upper Egyptian association. Perhaps, then, not only the divine legitimation of the
ruler but perhaps also his domination over the southern regions was implied in the
placement at Elephantine and Sai Island of the early New Kingdom statues. The Osirid
statues of Amenhotep I and Thutmose I are very different in form and size, but the
architectural use of all the examples was fundamental. In adorning the mud-brick
works at Deir el-Bahri, Amenhotep I used statues attached to broad pillars, while
Thutmose I added his thirty-six colossal images in the Hall behind the Fourth Pylon
and created a peristyle court with them (Lindblad 1984). Both rulers emphasized their
association with the great god Osiris by means of these mummiform statues, but
Amenhotep I’s representation in the double crown combined the power of the dual
king with the image. At Karnak Thutmose I may have been shown in the red crown as
well as the white, like Senwosret I on his Osirids from Lisht (CG 399 and 401), but at
Karnak the focus on veneration of deceased kings would have underlain the use of the
statue type. The other statue types are so poorly attested as to provide little to our
understanding of their use, but there are no new forms among them. Rather it is in the
non-royal sculpture that indications of new demands on the role of statuary are
evident. As Russmann noted, elite females played a more active role after the late
Second Intermediate Period. (Russmann 2005) On the so-called ‘‘Donation Stela’’
of Ahmose from Karnak Queen Ahmose-Nefertari is shown striding behind her
husband, clearly an active participant in the scene. Although no known temple statue
illustrates this pose in the early Eighteenth Dynasty, small non-royal funerary sculptures
did so, and by the reign of Amenhotep III had become a statue type used for large-scale
images of queen and elites alike (Bryan 2008). The inclusion of hand-held attributes,
such as lotuses, may also have been an early signal of the increased communicativeness
of sculpture seen so plainly in the statuary of Hatshepsut and her contemporaries.
3 Sculpture in the Mid-Eighteenth Dynasty
The Thutmosid royal image dominated sculpture from the reign of Thutmose II into
that of Thutmose IV, although its expression was manipulated both from ruler to
ruler and within each reign as well. Yet the idealized smiling face with broad upper
New Kingdom Sculpture 917