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

pharaohs: Sneferu at Dahshur, Sahure at Abusir, and Pepi II at Saqqara. 425 This scholarly
approach reflects the opinion that Egyptian artists of Old Kingdom royal reliefs “repeated
a rather circumscribed set of iconographic configurations from temple to temple and from
wall to wall.” 426 In the case of the reliefs in the valley temple of Sahure, for example,
scenes on the north wall depict large griffins trampling on enemies while deities lead
bound prisoners toward them. The theme of prisoners is also repeated on the walls of the
causeway just behind the valley temple, “emphasizing movement from valley temple to
causeway and farther on to the pyramid temple.” 427 Additional evidence regarding the
decoration of Sahure’s causeway derives from four recently discovered blocks of low
reliefs (2m in length; 2m in height), which depict, in registers, men bearing offerings, the
slaughtering of animals, the bringing of the gilded capstone to the pyramid, and also men
identified as Bedouins. 428 The workmanship of these reliefs is reported to be so refined
that it recalls the use of the word cestou~ by Herodotus. 429 On the basis of these images,
from the causeway of Sahure, 430 and also supplementary evidence from Sneferu’s and
Pepi’s II causeways, Hawass has suggested that the lower end of Khufu’s causeway
would have depicted the king’s titles, representations of Libyan captives, and royal
425 Hawass, “The Programs,” in O’Connor and Silverman, eds., Ancient Egyptian Kingship 230-231.
426 Arnold, “Royal Reliefs,” in Allen et al., Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids 83.
427 Arnold, “Royal Reliefs,” in Allen et al., Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids 94.
428 Hawass and Verner, “Newly Discovered Blocks from the Causeway of Sahure,” 181-184.
429 Hawass and Verner, “Newly Discovered Blocks from the Causeway of Sahure” 181: “the degree of
delicacy of the relief made the photographic recording of the blocks so difficult that it had to be done at
night with artificial illumination.”
430 Regarding the variety of the subject matter of the new scenes from Sahure’s causeway, Hawass and
Verner, “Newly Discovered Blocks from the Causeway of Sahure” 185, say that it “surpasses the hithertoheld
ideas about the monothematic decoration of the causeways of the Old Kingdom.” For a discussion
concerning the narrative character of the reliefs from Old Kingdom cult spaces, see Arnold, “Royal
Reliefs,” in Allen et al., Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids 84-87.
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