Torso of a king

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Slightly under-lifesize statues in dark stone like this and the adjacent sculpture were probably created by the Ptolemaic kings to serve the needs of native Egyptian royal cults, possibly connected with royal renewal given the regenerative significance of the color. Anatomically an advanced left leg is accompanied by flattening and lowering of the left rear hip muscle. Egyptian sculptors normally accurately observe this detail. Here, oddly, the right rear hip is shifted.

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