Colossal granite head of Amenhotep III from the temple of Mut, Karnak, 18th Dynasty,
c. 1350 BC, which was re-with the cut the cartouches of Ramesses II.
King Amenhotep III (1390-1352 BC) commissioned a large number of statues
of himself in Thebes, mostly for his mortuary temple on the west bank of the
Nile. This colossal head was found in the Temple of Mut, the consort of the
principal god Amun. The temple is just to the south-east of the Temple of
Karnak.
Royal statues in Egypt were sometimes usurped (taken over) by later
rulers. The normal procedure was simply to re-carve their name over the old
one, but in some cases the physical features were also altered. Ramesses II
(1279-1213 BC) seems to have altered a number of statues of Amenhotep III in
this way, presumably because he wished to represent his ideal image in a
certain form. In this statue, Ramesses seems to have concentrated on
changing the characteristic thick lips of the older statuary to thinner
ones. In other cases he took to reducing the plump stomach areas of
Amenhotep's statues to make them closer to his ideal of the physical form of the king.
The statue wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt.
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