Head of a King, Possibly Seankhkare Mentuhotep III

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The features of this head are closely matched by a relief from Armant, near Thebes, which is housed in the Brooklyn Museum and is inscribed for King Seankhkare Mentuhotep III, son and successor of the great Mentuhotep II. It is, therefore, conceivable that also this head depicts Mentuhatep III. The piece is a notable work from the late phase of a style that was first initiated during the later Old Kingdom and has been nicknamed “second style" (of the Old Kingdom) by Egyptologists. The sculptor conceived the image in a predominantly stylized manner. The mouth—circumscribed by a prominent relief line—can be understood as smiling, but the expression is not communicative; the shape of the ears is unusually abstract; and the elongated, slanting eyes are set unnaturally high in the face, almost eliminating any indication of a forehead. Only the softly rounded surfaces and outline of the cheeks and jaws add animation to the predominantly conceptual image.

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