The Statue of Horemheb and Amenia is a large double statue of the Pharaoh

Horemheb Horemheb, also spelled Horemhab or Haremhab ( egy, ḥr-m-ḥb, meaning " Horus is in Jubilation") was the last pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt (1550–1295 BC). He ruled for at least 14 years between 1319 BC and 1292 BC. ...

and his wife Amenia that was found at the ancient site of

Saqqara Saqqara ( ar, سقارة, ), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English , is an Egyptian village in Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

. Now kept at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, for many years the identity of the two sitters was unknown until a team of Dutch and British archaeologists discovered a missing fragment of the statue in Horemheb's tomb in Saqqara.

Discovery

The statue was acquired by the British Museum in 1839 from the Anastasi collection. The original provenance of was ascribed to either Thebes or Saqqara. However, scholarly opinion tended to favour Saqqara, as Anastasi was more active in the Memphite than the Theban area, and a group of similar double statues (the most famous being the statue of

Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...

and his wife in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wi ...

) come from tombs in the vicinity of that ancient site.

Recent evidence

In 2009, concrete evidence was found that proved beyond reasonable doubt that the statue was that of Horemheb and his wife Amenia, taken from their mortary tomb in Saqqara. In 1976, a multinational team of excavators from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom found a missing piece from a statue in

's burial chamber that seemed to show three clasped hands. In 2009, a plaster cast was made of the clasped hands and shown to be a perfect match for the missing part of the

's double statue.Saqqara Archaeological Team
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Description

The husband and wife are seated upright on a throne with lion's legs. Both wear long

tunic A tunic is a garment for the body, usually simple in style, reaching from the shoulders to a length somewhere between the hips and the knees. The name derives from the Latin ''tunica'', the basic garment worn by both men and women in Ancient Rome ...

s and

wig A wig is a head or hair accessory made from human hair, animal hair, or synthetic fiber. The word wig is short for periwig, which makes its earliest known appearance in the English language in William Shakespeare's ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona' ...

s, which were fashionable in Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt. The man has baggy

sleeve A sleeve ( ang, slīef, a word allied to ''slip'', cf. Dutch ) is the part of a garment that covers the arm, or through which the arm passes or slips. The sleeve is a characteristic of fashion seen in almost every country and time period, acro ...

s and

sandal Sandals are an open type of footwear, consisting of a sole held to the wearer's foot by straps going over the instep and around the ankle. Sandals can also have a heel. While the distinction between sandals and other types of footwear can ...

s on his feet. The double statue is very unusual in that it shows the wife holding her husband's hand with both of hers. The statue would have originally been painted in bright colours, most of which have disappeared. Apart from minor damage, the statue is in near perfect condition, brilliantly conveying the serene elegance of Egyptian aristocracy in the New Kingdom. The double statue was also an inspiration to the English sculptor Henry Moore, who used it as a model for many of his bronze works.

References

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Discovery

Recent evidence

Description

References

Further reading