BIA

MARS 2015
Banî Swayf, etc. L’entretien a porté également
sur la possibilité d’organiser une exposition
archéologique islamique en Suisse. (Dînâ ‘Abd
al-‘Alîm, « al-Damâtî reçoit l’ambassadeur de
Suisse », al-Yawm al-Sâbi‘, 9 mars 2015. Voir
également ‘Alâ’ al-Dîn al-Zâhir, « Coopération
entre le ministère de l’Archéologie et la
Suisse », Ruz al-Yûsuf, 9 mars).
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Jeudi 12 mars 2015
In 1859, the Frenchman Auguste MARIETTE
found a huge double statue of Amenhotep III
and his favourite queen, Tiye. MARIETTE was the
first director of antiquities in Egypt and
“discovered” famous monuments like the
Serapeum at Saqqâra and the Valley Temple of
Chephren at Gîza.
The statue was found at Madînat Hâbû, the
great temple of Ramses III in western Thebes,
near the Roman Court. But the statue originally
stood at the great southern gate of the
funerary temple of Amenhotep III at Kom al-
Hîtân, to the east of Madînat Hâbû.
When the statue was discovered, many
sections of the figures of the king and queen
were missing and had to be restored by filling
in the gaps. The restoration work was carried
out at the turn of the last century, by an
Italian artist and restorer. He clearly showed
the difference between the original parts of the
statue and the restored portions.
The statue is now housed in the Cairo
Museum, at the end of the main hall on the
ground floor. The king is shown seated, with
his hands placed flat on his knees. Queen Tiye
sits beside him, with one arm placed around
the king’s waist. Between them is a small
statue of one of their daughters, perhaps the
one who married her brother Akhenaton and
was the mother of Tutankhamun.
The most interesting characteristic of this
statue is that the figure of the queen is the
same size as that of the king. This is
considered unusual because a queen was
always shown as being significantly shorter
than a king.
This sculpture shows the power of Queen
Tiye, the beloved of Amenhotep III. He built a
palace and had an artificial lake constructed at
Malkata so he could sail in the royal barge
with his favourite queen.
Egyptologists Hourig SOUROUZIAN and Rainer
STADELMANN are now working at the Kom al-
Hîtân Temple. They have found other huge
standing statues of the king and queen, as well
as of Sekhmet, the goddess of war and
healing.
This has led some scholars to speculate
that Amenhotep III suffered ill health at the end
of his reign, and that the statues of Sekhmet
were intended to help him become well again.
Thanks to the expedition’s good work, the
temple can now be reconstructed, except for
the northern section, where a modern
restaurant and house are located.
The second part of this story began when
the US Agency for International Development
(USAID) funded a project supported by Fâyza
Abû al-Nagâ, the minister of international cooperation.
The project began in 2009 and was
intended to lower the level of the water table
around the temples on the west bank at Luxor.
The team worked under my direction and
was headed by ‘Abd al-Ghaffâr Wagdî and
others. In the course of our work at Madînat
Hâbû, we came away with many surprises,
including the recovery of more than 16 pieces
that appeared to be statue fragments. We then
became detectives, searching for the statue
that the missing pieces had come from.
Because the statue must have been a huge
one, we decided that we should look at two
kings — Amenhotep III and Ramses II. Their
reigns were known to feature colossal statues.
We faced a problem, however, because the
pieces that we discovered were not inscribed,
and they could not be easily dated. But we
had a clue: because some of the statues of
Amenhotep III had been found at Madînat
Hâbû, we began to wonder if these blocks
belonged to the famous double-seated statue
of the king and queen.
This statue was missing many parts when it
was first recovered. Through careful
examination and study, we were able to
confirm that the newly found pieces included
BIA LI — Janvier/Juin 2015 59