Statue of Ity-sen
Description
Object Label: Ity-sen, son of the official Rawer, was carved as if in motion, left leg striding forward. But now, both feet and the head are missing from his severely damaged portrait sculpture. Iconoclasm in pharaonic Egypt had specific goals, and was done with precision. Several thousand years ago, Ity-sen’s iconoclastic attackers sought to incapacitate the spirit believed to reside in the sculpture by targeting specific body parts. The result would have been devastating. By damaging his image, his enemies had destroyed his ability to function in the afterlife; without his head and feet, Ity-sen could no longer see, speak, hear, breathe, or walk. Like a Kongo nkisi whose empowering materials were removed, this sculpture was no longer a vessel for a spirit, but simply a carving. Caption: Statue of Ity-sen, ca. 2500–2350 B.C.E.. Limestone, 61 x 20 1/2 x 15 3/16 in. (155 x 52 x 38.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.365. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
Connections
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.365 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3432 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.