Block from a Relief Depicting a Battle

Block from a Relief Depicting a Battle

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Builders reused this painted relief block in the foundation of Ramesses IV's mortuary temple, subsequently excavated by the Metropolitan Museum. In the relief, western Asian soldiers are shown being trampled under the horses that pull the royal chariot, signaling the foreigners' defeat in battle by the might of the Egyptian pharaoh. When the piece was excavated, this and another fragment of a battle scene (13.180.22) were dated to the reign of Ramesses II. A recent study of their stylistic and iconographic features, however, has caused scholars to redate them earlier, probably to the reign of Amenhotep II. This redating indicates that by the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, monumental battle scenes had become part of the decorative scheme of a temple's exterior walls.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Block from a Relief Depicting a BattleBlock from a Relief Depicting a BattleBlock from a Relief Depicting a BattleBlock from a Relief Depicting a BattleBlock from a Relief Depicting a Battle

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.