Amunhotep II
Description
Object Label: The faces on most statues of Amunhotep II differ slightly from those of his two immediate predecessors. Compared with the sculpture of Thutmose III or Hatshepsut exhibited nearby, for example, this statue’s face is a little longer, the eyes somewhat narrower, the brows a bit straighter, the nose slightly thicker, and the mouth less curved. Each change is minute, but together they create a distinctive, recognizable image of Amunhotep II. This face is not a portrait, but an official image conceived by the chief royal sculptors to communicate the ideal physical appearance of Amunhotep II. The Egyptians believed that reality was momentary and thus, within the context of eternity, meaningless. Only an ideal representation would endure forever. Caption: Amunhotep II, ca. 1426–1400 B.C.E.. Granite, 12 1/2 × 9 1/2 × 6 in., 28 lb. (31.8 × 24.1 × 15.2 cm, 12.7kg). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 56.7.
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A carved red granite head/face fragment of a male Egyptian figure with curly wig elements and a painted or mineral-speckled surface.
The image shows a close, front-facing view of a sculpted head with a rounded chin, defined lips, and a stylized beard area or chin detailing (possibly part of the chin beard). The figure wears a striped or segmented curly wig/khephresh-like headdress; faint linear marks on the forehead/wig indicate the wig pattern. The surface is mottled red with darker speckling consistent with red granite in photography, though precise tooling details are worn. No clearly legible hieroglyphs, cartouches, or inscriptions are visible on the shown surfaces. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is present. The object appears photographed against a plain white background, with only the head portion visible.
Connections
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 56.7 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3621 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.