This is perhaps the most perfectly preserved royal statue in the museums collection, as only the muzzle of the rams head held by the King and the head of the ureas have been damaged .The statue was discovered by Belzoni in 1816 , apparently in a cache with six Sakhmet statues in the temple of Mut, and passed into the collection of Henry Salt, for whom Belzon was collection antiquities. The statue was clearly one of Salts favorite objects, and he sent it to England in autumn of 1819, well in advance of the rest of the collection, no doubt to persuade the British Museums Trustees to purchase his other objects.
The king is seated on a cubic throne with a small cushion at the rear. He wears a wig of a type favored in the nineteenth Dynasty ,with long lappets framing the face ,and a ureaus (cobra) on his brow ;his kit is pleated with a decorated waistband or belt, and there are sandals on his feet .
On his knees he holds a rams head ,a symbol of the god Amun. Royal figures holding emblems such as this tend to stand ,kneel, or prostrate themselves , as they are usually presenting the emblem to the deity, so a seated statue of this type is quite unusual .
The cartouche on the kings left shoulder gives the personal name Sety, beloved of ptah, and that on the right his throne name , Usermaate- meryamum. Framing the sides of the throne is a block border pattern, and at the bottom rear corners appears the Sematawy emblem of the intertwined heraldic plants of Upper and lower Egypt , symbolizing the unity of the tow lands .
The kings names and epithets are also inscribed on the back pillar and around the base. It is intriguing that the quality of the caving of the inscriptions and decoration does not match that of the remainder of the object: note the relative roughness of the block pattern on the throne and the awkwardness of hieroglyphs. Sety II was the short-lived successor of his father Merenptah , and was buried in tomb 15 in the Valley of the kings.
There may have been civil conflict during his reign , since there seems to have been a rival ruler, Amenmesse , in the southern part of Egypt ,who also owned a tomb in the Valley of the King (KV 10) . To the tourist ,Setys best known building work is the triple barque shrine in the first court of the temple of Karnak, but he also constructed the first pylon of the Mut temple; it seems likely from the provenance of this statue that it was part of the same building project.
New kingdom nineteenth dynasty c1200 -1194BC
From karnak temple of Mut
Purchase as part of the first salt collection in 1823
Sand stone height 164,7 cm EA 26
read more here about egyptian civilization ...http://www.egyptianmade.org/antiques
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