Portrait of a king making sacrifices
The image of a king sacrificing is a limestone relief from the New Kingdom that shows a king sacrificing. It belongs to the Egyptian collection of the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim .
It is very likely that the king (Pharaoh) represented is Thutmose I , but this cannot be proven with absolute certainty. Thutmose I was the father of Queen Hatshepsut . She took over instead of her stepson Thutmose III. the rule of Upper and Lower Egypt for about 15 years . During this time, reliefs and round sculptures reached their first peak in the New Kingdom. Relatively stable external and internal political conditions ensured the rise of court art and the successful implementation of a peaceful expedition to the incense land of Punt , from which gold, ivory and other valuable products were brought to Egypt.
Site and dating
The particularly finely crafted relief comes from the terrace temple of Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari in Thebes- West, a temple complex from the New Kingdom . On the top of the three terraces there are several chapels, one of which was dedicated to the Queen's father, Thutmose I. This relief, which dates from around 1470 BC, most likely comes from the front wall of this chapel. Is dated.
presentation
The relief has the dimensions height 41 cm, width 46 cm, depth 10 cm. According to the pictorial program of the temple walls of this time, a king is depicted on the relief who performs an act of sacrifice in front of a god who is no longer visible. The sacrifice of the king, who also served as the chief priest, served to preserve the course of the world. The king wears the atef crown , which is made up of ram's horns, cow horns, two ostrich feathers, a sun disk and urea - a symbol of the united Egypt . The lips, bordered by a thin sharp ridge, form a youthful mouth. Another uraeus serpent rises above the forehead . The slightly almond-shaped eye is continued in a plastic make-up line. A youthful face is depicted.
The very vividly worked hieroglyphs to the left of the portrait of the king are part of a formulaic blessing that can be supplemented on the basis of parallel texts: “(The King of Upper and Lower Egypt NN), provided with any life like Re, he will be (the first among the Kas of all living, in which appears as king of Upper and Lower Egypt on the throne of Geb as Re) ”.
literature
- Hans Kayser : The Egyptian antiquities in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim. Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim 1973, p. 69.
- Wilfried Seipel : Pictures for eternity. 3000 years of Egyptian art. Heidelberg Castle, June 2 to August 28, 1983. Stadler, Konstanz 1983, ISBN 978-3-7977-0105-3 .
- Manfred Gutgesell: Relief of Thutmose I . In: Arne Eggebrecht (ed.): Egypt's rise to world power . von Zabern, Mainz 1987, ISBN 3-8053-0964-3 , p. 112–113 (catalog manual for the exhibition in the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim August 3 - November 29, 1987).
- Wilfried Seipel: Egypt. Gods, graves and art. 4000 years of belief in the hereafter. Volume 1 (= catalogs of the Upper Austrian State Museum. New series no. 22). Landesmuseum, Linz 1989, ISBN 978-3-900746-14-8 .
Web links
- Entry at The Global Egyptian Museum
- Illustration of the relief at The Global Egyptian Museum
Individual evidence
- ^ Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim; Inventory number PM 4538