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-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
Granite head of an Egyptian statue with a nemes headdress.
This artifact is the fragmented head of a statue, likely depicting a pharaoh, carved from pink granite. It features finely detailed facial features and a nemes headdress, indicating royal iconography. The style is typical of royal portraiture seen in ancient Egyptian art, presenting a calm and idealized expression.
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.