Huge Statue of Powerful Egyptian Queen Has Been Found

This is one of the best preserved and oldest large Egyptian statues. A European-Egyptian team discovered the 12-ft-tall (3.6-m-tall) quartzite representation of the powerful Egyptian queen at the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III on Luxor's West Bank.

The statue was joined to the broken-off leg of a much larger colossal statue of Amenhotep III, the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty who ruled between 1391 and 1353 B.C. The queen was Tiye, the favorite wife of Amenhotep III.

This temple is the ancient Egypt's largest one: 2,300 ft (700 m) long, famous for the Colossi of Memnon, twin 59-ft (21-m) statues of Amenhotep III found at the entrance of the temple. The surprise of the new finding is given by the fact that massive earthquakes have ravaged the temple along the time.
"The leg [of the larger colossus] was very badly damaged, so the surprise was that the queen lying behind it was intact—she is very beautiful," said Hourig Sourouzian, lead archaeologist and director of the Colossi of Memnon and the Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project.

The team had also discovered two sphinxes with the heads of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye and ten granite statues of the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet of warfare and healing.

In ancient times, the temple had six colossi of Amenhotep III in a seated position, in three pairs located 330 ft (100 m) one from the other. Only the Colossi of Memnon remained until our days. The team had started to dig at the right leg of a 50-ft-tall (15-m-tall) Amenhotep III colossus of the second pair.
"The first thing we saw of that statue was the thumb. But the block was [getting] larger and larger ... and then we had the surprise of this beautiful queen who appeared there by the leg of the king," said Sourouzian.

It is known that Queen Tiye was often represented standing by the right leg of Amenhotep III colossi, while Amenhotep III's mother, Mutemwiya, was represented by his left leg.

The statue had an inscription: "hereditary princess, great of honor, beloved of the lady of the sycamore, [and] mistress of the two lands."

"Since 2000, 84 statues of the goddess have been found at the complex, perhaps a sign that Amenhotep III's health was failing as he ruled into old age. Maybe Amenhotep III, at the end of his reign, was a little bit sick and he put up many statues of Sekhmet so she can help him in healing," Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities told National Geographic News.

Egyptian colossi

The monumentality of the temple and the large number of built colossi are signs that Egypt was experiencing a "Golden Age" of the New Kingdom, the peak of its prosperity, when Egyptian empire grew and the most ambitious ancient Egyptian constructions were raised.

"It was the highest moment of the Egyptian civilization, the greatest expansion, the greatest wealth, the greatest power ... and the colossi were accordingly of a very large scale," said Sourouzian.

Colossi defended ancient temples and displayed the divine side of the pharaoh. Other standing colossi of the king ‘guarded’ once the great open court of the temple.

"[Colossi] are gods in their own right ... and they act as intermediaries between gods and men," said W. Raymond Johnson, an Egyptologist at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

The power of the queen

By the time of Amenhotep III, Egypt also experienced a time of female empowerment, fact confirmed by the new discovery.

"[The statue] shows that the women of the crown are so important they are represented openly on colossal scale," Sourouzian said.

"We know from other monuments and monuments of this sort that Queen Tiye shared power with her husband. And this of course culminates with Akhenaten [Amenhotep III's son] and Nefertiti, when [they] seem to be almost—but not quite—equals in sharing power," said Johnson.
It was thought that the temple had been destroyed by a mega-earthquake in the 1st century A.D.

"Evidence also exists of a quake during the Ramessid Period that followed the 18th dynasty, during the reign of Merenptah (1212-1203 B.C.)," said Sourouzian.

The statues and stelae slabs are now encountered in shattered fragments strewn at the site of the temple, while the stone material of the temple walls and pylons had been reused in the building of the neighboring temples even from antiquity.

The digging shows that the temple was not purposely destroyed for the reuse of its building material but it was first crumbled by earthquakes.
"It was a very strong earthquake, during which time the colossi jumped. They not only have fallen, they jumped from their places," said Sourouzian, whose team aims to remake the 3,400-year-old statues starting from the left fragments.

Recently, the team put back in its original position a 25-ft (7.5-m) standing colossus of Amenhotep III , the first to join the Colossi of Memnon in millennia.

"Most temples have their walls, courts, sanctuaries and even their ceilings, but they have lost most of their statuary and other temple furniture. This temple on the contrary has lost all walls, ceilings, pylons, columns—everything. But the statues and stelae have remained," Sourouzian told National Geographic News.

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