Relief with Head of King Ahmose Wearing the Red Crown

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ahmose, first king of Dynasty 18 and founder of the New Kingdom, was the son of Seqenenre and brother of Kamose, the last two rulers of Dynasty 17. Continuing the work of his father and brother, he succeeded in driving the Hyksos rulers out of Avaris (modern Tell el-Daba in the Delta and reunited Egypt after Second Intermediate Period. Further campaigns consolidated Egypt's control over Nubia. Like the rulers of Dynasty 11, who reunited Egypt at the beginning of the second millennium B.C., Ahmose was of Theban origin and was buried at Thebes. This relief of Ahmose wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt comes from his funerary cenotaph at Abydos. Since the Early Dynastic Period (ca. 3100-2649 B.C.), when the first kings of Egypt were buried there, Abydos had been regarded as the tomb of Osiris, god of the afterlife, and both royal and private individuals set up cenotaphs there.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art