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This unusual statue, depicting a woman with four
royal children, was found near Bubastis. It was
discovered when a local man began digging
foundations for a new house. The chief inspector
of Bubastis, Louis Labieb Boles, sent in a team
that carefully brought the statue out of the
muddy ground in which it was lying. After being
kept for several days in the nearby town of
Zagazig for cleaning, the statue was brought to
the Cairo Museum. The chief restorer and his
staff spent three weeks cleaning and drying the
statue, which was waterlogged from its sojourn
in the wet ground of the delta. The central
figure of the statue shows a mature woman seated
on a chair. With her are four royal children.
Three of the children stand against her chest,
and the fourth, a princess, sits across her lap.
The statue was once painted, and traces of color
still remain. Most striking are the metal and
stone inlays that have survived the ravages of
time. The pedestal had once been inscribed with
a hieroglyphic text, but this has now been
erased. The style of the carving and the details
of clothing and hairstyle date this piece to the
mid 18th dynasty, to the reign of Tuthmosis III
or Amenhotep II. Egyptian scholar Mohammed Saleh
compares it to a similar statue of Queen Huy,
mother of the principal wife of Tuthmosis III,
who is shown with her five grandchildren. |
