Egyptologists have pieced together fragments of the first known ancient portrait of a pharaoh drawn from the front rather than in profile, a Spanish archaeologist said Thursday.
Jose Manuel Galan told Reuters in an interview that the portrait, which appears to show either Tuthmosis III or his mother Hatshepsut, was painted on a wooden board buried in the courtyard in front of a tomb in the southern town of Luxor.
Hatshepsut, who was often portrayed as a man, ruled concurrently with her son for about 20 years from 1503 B.C. Luxor, also known as Thebes, was the dynastic capital.
The piece is unusual because ancient Egyptians always portrayed Egyptians in profile. The only frontal portraits were of foreigners, underworld demons and other weird creatures, and the dwarf god Bes, widely believed to be a cultural import.
Sketch or casual drawing?
Galan speculated that the royal portrait was either a sketch for a statue or a casual drawing of the kind art students made to show off their skills or for amusement.
The fact that the wooden board also has a version of the drawing by a less skillful hand suggests that a student might have used it to copy the work of his master, he added.
The Egyptologists found one fragment in 2002 and 13 in 2003 and have spent the past year piecing them together and preparing the board for exhibition in the Luxor museum.
The look of a king
Galan said he was confident it was a pharaoh because the figure was wearing the “nemes” crown, a trapezoidal cloth garment exclusively worn by kings.
“We find the closest parallel to this object in a wooden board in the British Museum, and the way their eyes, their lips, their nose, their figures are done is very peculiar to this time,” he said.
The wooden board is 20 by 12 inches (50 by 30 centimeters) and covered in creamy-yellow stucco. The drawing is in black paint, with a square red grid of the kind used to copy proportions.
Galan said the board may have been part of the funerary equipment of an official called Djehuty, who was overseer of the treasury and public works under Hatshepsut, or possibly of a member of Djehuty’s family. Djehuty’s tomb, a focus of Galan's research, lies nearby.