Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · statue

Queen Ahmose, Mother of Hatshepsut

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Hatshepsut supported her right to rule by claiming to be the daughter of the god Amun, who visited her mother, Queen Ahmose, in the form of King Thutmose I. Ahmose’s role in this royal myth explains the prominence of her images in Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri. This fragmentary head of Ahmose was the work of one of Hatshepsut’s best sculptors, who indicated the subject’s maturity by carving a slight double chin. The headdress was later scored with a chisel, perhaps in preparation for repainting. Caption: Queen Ahmose, Mother of Hatshepsut, ca. 1478–1458 B.C.E.. Limestone, pigment, 5 × 9 × 1 1/4 in., 1.5 lb. (12.7 × 22.9 × 3.2 cm, 0.68kg). Brooklyn Museum, Anonymous gift in memory of Arthur W. Clement, 57.76.2.

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.

Fragmentary painted limestone relief showing a portion of an Egyptian royal figure’s face and headdress, with surrounding hieroglyphic text.

The image depicts a broken, irregular limestone relief fragment. On the left portion, a dense vertical field of incised hieroglyphs is visible, with remains of pigment (notably bluish/greenish traces) filling or accenting parts of the carving. The right side preserves part of a painted human head profile: a substantial wig or headdress with a rendered brow/forehead area and a nose/mouth are visible; pigment survives on the face and hair/headdress. The fragment is too incomplete to read a full inscription or identify a specific royal name/carthouche; no clearly legible cartouche boundaries or distinct throne names are present. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible. The relief’s style and paint traces are consistent with New Kingdom royal/commemorative iconography, but the specific identity claimed by the catalogue (Queen Ahmose, Mother of Hatshepsut) cannot be confirmed from readable text or attributes in this photo alone.

religious New Kingdom (exact reign/queen unknown from image) fragmentary
Materials limestonepigment (blue/green traces and light/orange/brown paint on face/headdress)
Signs incised hieroglyphs (unreadable individual signs) ×40

Connections

Found at Thebes
Deities Amun
Materials Limestone

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 57.76.2 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 3634 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.