The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

The fragment was initially assigned to his valley temple, but it has recently been
discussed as perhaps belonging to the upper part of the causeway leading to the temple. 420
This suggestion has been made on the basis of preserved relief decoration from the
causeways of two other Old Kingdom rulers’ funerary complexes, those of fifth-dynasty
Unis and sixth-dynasty Pepi II, both at Saqqara. In both cases, the upper parts of the
causeways preserve representations of personifications of estates in relief sculpture. 421
In addition to this problematic fragment, the decoration of Khufu’s causeway has
also been linked to a number of equally problematic relief fragments that were allegedly
discovered in debris associated with the structure. 422 These seventeen fragments,
reported to be extremely small poorly preserve parts of two human faces, an ox, and a
bird. The remaining depictions defy identification. 423 As such, these fragments contribute
little to our knowledge of the decoration of Khufu’s causeway. 424
Despite the paucity of material evidence, the reconstruction of the relief
decoration of the inner walls of Khufu’s causeway has been attempted on the basis of the
surviving reliefs of the lower temples and causeways of three other Old Kingdom
420
For a brief, still informative, survey of material evidence regarding the decorative programs, function,
and overall meaning of causeways of the Old Kingdom, see Hawass and Verner, “Newly Discovered
Blocks of the Causeway of Sahure” 177-180; for a discussion of the relief fragment, as part of the wall
decoration of Khufu’s valley temple, see Goedicke, “Re-used Blocks” 16-17; for the possibility that this
block may belong to the causeway, see D. Arnold, “Head of a Female Personification of an Estate,” in J. P.
Allen et al., Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids (exhibition catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, September 16, 1999-January 9, 2000 and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, February
13-May 22, 2000; New York, 1999) 226-227.
421
Arnold, “Head of a Female Personification of an Estate,” in Allen et al., Egyptian Art in the Age of the
Pyramids 227, n. 7.
422
G. A. Reisner and W. S. Smith, A History of the Giza Necropolis II (Cambridge, Mass., 1955) 4.
423
Reisner and Smith, A History of the Giza Necropolis 4, refer to them as tiny; also their figure 7, which
illustrates these fragments, provides only their inventory numbers, but no dimensions, and reduces their
number to seventeen.
424
Reinser and Smith, A History of the Giza Necropolis 4; also Hawass and Verner, “Newly Discovered
Blocks from the Causeway of Sahure” 178.
245