Introduction

Egyptian sculpture in the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Period continued many of the artistic traditions developed during earlier periods. The poses of statues and the conventions for representing the human body were little changed, as were many costumes and accessories. Since the persistence of styles from the recent past was frequently an important factor in ancient Egyptian art, it is not surprising to find a strong New Kingdom element in the sculpture of the Third Intermediate Period. That tendency continued during the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties, but the archaizing imitation of more distant periods became increasingly important. Never had Egyptian sculptors mined their past so thoroughly as they did during the Late Period. The layering of references to the past reached a peak of complexity during the Thirtieth Dynasty, when both royal and private statues often imitated the style of Twenty-sixth Dynasty sculpture, which was itself archaizing.

Very few statues of private people were made any longer for tombs; almost all were now intended to be placed in temples. The reasons for this change were numerous and complex, deriving from such factors as the increased emphasis on the coffin’s painted decoration and the more frequent use of group burials. Whatever its causes, the change had several consequences for the statuary itself. The use of wood and limestone, relatively soft materials that had always been used primarily for tomb statues, declined sharply in favor of harder stones, such as granite and basalt, that were more resistant to the accidental damages that might occur in the semi-public but well-traveled courts and halls of a temple. There was also a tendency to give passers-by more to read, by increasing the number of texts on the back pillar and base of a statue, and by placing inscriptions on the clothing of a figure and even, in certain cases, on its body.

Statues of women had always been made primarily for tombs. The Egyptians apparently felt that images of women, like women themselves, were at risk in public places without the protection of their menfolk. During the New Kingdom, statues of married couples had sometimes been placed in temples, but this practice virtually ceased during the Late Period. From the Twenty-first through the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, virtually the only women shown solo in temple sculpture were the Divine Consorts who, in addition to being ‘‘wed’’ to the god of the temple, Amun, were women of royal lineage. Even the statue of the lady Shebensopdet (Russmann 1989: no. 73, pp. 157-9, 220), whose grandfather was King Osorkon II and whose father was the High Priest in Karnak temple, where her seated statue was placed, may have been given additional protection in the form of statues of her husband and father-in-law.

Portraits - or distinctive physiognomies that give the impression ofbeing individual likenesses - had been produced as early as the Old Kingdom, when statues of tomb-owners sometimes showed them with faces and bodies of mature appearance (Metropolitan Museum 1999: no. 44, pp. 229-31). During the Middle Kingdom, the faces of the Twelfth Dynasty kings Senwosret III and Amenemhet III, and some of their followers, showed unmistakable signs of aging, although their bodies always reflected the prime of life (Saleh and Sourouzian 1987: nos. 98, 102-5). In the New Kingdom, during the Eighteenth Dynasty, King Amenhotep III was occasionally shown with signs of age in his face and body, as were a few of his highest courtiers and, remarkably, his Queen Tiyi, as well as some of her female attendants (Kozloff and Bryan 1992: nos. 23, 26, 50; Saleh and Sourouzian 1987: no. 149). This interest in representing signs of age continued into the reign of his son Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti, but then it seems to have disappeared for the next six centuries. Not until the Twenty-fifth Dynasty did statues of men with individualistic features, usually suggestive of advancing age, become an important feature in Egyptian sculpture. This development was to last well into the Ptolemaic Period.

Throughout the Late Period, Egypt was exposed to various groups of foreigners, including Libyans, who had settled in the western Nile Delta; Kushites, who had long known the Egyptians as conquerors in their southern homeland; Greeks, who traveled to Egypt as traders and as soldiers who sometimes settled there; and several waves of invaders from the East, including the Assyrians and then the Persians; the latter, unlike other invaders, actually occupied Egypt twice. The influence of these groups varied greatly; those that affected the arts will be discussed below. Here, however, we may note that even when foreign influence on sculpture was most noticeable, it was nonetheless a minor factor in the continuing general insularity of Egyptian art and culture. Readers may note that many of the statues discussed in this chapter are said to come from the Karnak Cachette. That is the name given to a historic find made in 1903 and 1904, in the temple of Karnak, in present-day Luxor. There, buried in a pit beneath the floor of a courtyard, archaeologists found hundreds of stone statues and pieces of temple equipment, dating from the Middle and New Kingdoms through the Third Intermediate and Late Periods, into early Ptolemaic times (PM 1972: II, 136-67, lists accounts of the find and all known objects found). Statues and temple equipment tended to accumulate in Egyptian temples over the centuries, and it was apparently common practice to bury obsolete pieces within the sacred precincts. Similar burials have been found in other temples, but the Karnak Cachette is by far the largest.