Osiride statue of Amenhotep I
Standing almost three metres tall, this imposing painted sandstone statue represents Amenhotep I, the second king of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty, in the form of the god Osiris. Dating to approximately 1525–1504 B.C., it is one of the relatively few surviving royal statues that can be confidently attributed to Amenhotep I’s own reign, making it an exceptionally important portrait of one of the early rulers of the New Kingdom.
The king stands rigidly upright, enveloped in the close-fitting, mummiform garment associated with Osiris, god of the dead and regeneration. His arms are crossed across his chest and his clenched fists contain holes which probably once secured separately made royal insignia, perhaps fashioned from wood. Upon his head rests the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, while a long divine beard extends from his chin.
Traces of the statue’s original colour remain. The robe was painted white, the king’s skin red, and parts of the crown retained their colouring, while the beard and its strap were rendered in a dark blue-black. At approximately 2.85 metres high, 57 cm wide and 65 cm deep, and weighing more than 1.1 tonnes, the figure would have presented a striking image of the deceased yet eternally renewed king.
The Osiride form itself had a long history. Similar royal figures had appeared centuries earlier during the Middle Kingdom, notably at the neighbouring mortuary temple of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II at Deir el-Bahari. Amenhotep I consciously drew upon this older royal tradition. His use of the combined Double Crown on an Osiride statue, however, appears to have been an innovation, as earlier examples more commonly show the king wearing either the White Crown of Upper Egypt or the Red Crown of Lower Egypt.
Found at the Temple of Mentuhotep II
The archaeological history of the statue is almost as interesting as the sculpture itself. It was excavated at Deir el-Bahari, on the West Bank of ancient Thebes, within the temple complex of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Mentuhotep II. The excavations were conducted by Édouard Naville and Harry Reginald Holland Hall for the Egypt Exploration Fund, during the Fund’s investigation of the site in the early twentieth century. The statue subsequently entered the British Museum through the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1905.
Its presence in Mentuhotep II’s temple does not necessarily mean that it was originally erected there. Amenhotep I had his own buildings at Deir el-Bahari, including small mud-brick sanctuaries in this already sacred landscape. One appears to have stood in an area subsequently incorporated into the enormous terraced temple constructed by Hatshepsut several decades later. When this new monument was built, parts of Amenhotep I’s earlier structures were dismantled or built over.
The king’s Osiride statues appear not simply to have been discarded. Instead, they were relocated to the neighbouring temple of Mentuhotep II, where fragments of several statues of Amenhotep I have subsequently been discovered.
This relocation is particularly intriguing because Amenhotep I’s sculpture was itself influenced by the royal imagery of the Middle Kingdom. Mentuhotep II, who had reunited Egypt centuries earlier after the First Intermediate Period, provided an obvious model for an early New Kingdom dynasty which had itself recently reunited Egypt following another age of political division. Amenhotep I was therefore physically and artistically placing himself within an ancient Theban tradition of kingship.
The statue eventually discovered by Naville and Hall had thus travelled only a short distance in antiquity, but in doing so had acquired an unusual history: a monument of an 18th Dynasty king, created in the shadow of an 11th Dynasty predecessor, later moved as another great 18th Dynasty ruler transformed the sacred landscape around it.
Today, the statue survives as one of the most important contemporary images of Amenhotep I; a king who stood close to the beginning of the New Kingdom, between the generation that expelled the Hyksos and the Thutmosid rulers who would soon transform Egypt into the dominant imperial power of the eastern Mediterranean and north-eastern Africa.
Amenhotep I and the Birth of the New Kingdom
Amenhotep I was born into the royal family that had transformed Egypt. His father, Ahmose I, defeated the Hyksos rulers who had controlled much of northern Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period and reunited the country under Theban rule, establishing what is conventionally regarded as the 18th Dynasty and the beginning of the New Kingdom. Amenhotep’s mother was the formidable queen Ahmose-Nefertari, one of the most influential royal women of the early New Kingdom and later herself the object of a long-lasting religious cult.
Amenhotep was not necessarily his father’s original heir. Evidence suggests that elder royal sons died before reaching the throne, leaving Amenhotep to succeed Ahmose I. He may still have been comparatively young at his accession, and Ahmose-Nefertari appears to have remained an exceptionally prominent figure during the early years of his reign.
Amenhotep inherited a newly reunified kingdom, but the achievements of his reign should not be overshadowed by those of his father. If Ahmose I had won Egypt’s reunification, Amenhotep I helped consolidate it.
Military activity continued to the south. The autobiography of the soldier Ahmose, son of Ebana, records his participation in Amenhotep I’s Nubian campaign, while another contemporary soldier, Ahmose Pen-Nekhbet, also refers to campaigning under the king. Egyptian authority was strengthened in Nubia, and Amenhotep established a temple on Sai Island, close to the Third Cataract.
The king was also an active builder. At Karnak, he commissioned important additions to the sanctuary of Amun, including an elegant barque chapel constructed from Egyptian alabaster. Although many of his buildings were later dismantled or incorporated into the monuments of subsequent rulers, surviving blocks reveal the increasingly important relationship between the early 18th Dynasty kings and the god Amun of Thebes.
Amenhotep I appears to have died without a surviving heir capable of succeeding him. The throne subsequently passed to Thutmose I, whose parentage did not belong directly to the Ahmosid royal line and whose accession introduced the family from which Hatshepsut, Thutmose III and their successors would emerge.
Yet, Amenhotep’s influence did not end with his death. Together with his mother Ahmose-Nefertari, Amenhotep I eventually became one of the great deified royal figures of the Theban necropolis. Centuries later, during the Ramesside Period, the inhabitants of the workmen’s community at Deir el-Medina revered the pair as divine patrons. Tomb paintings and stelae repeatedly show craftsmen and their families presenting offerings to the long-dead king and queen. It is therefore particularly fitting that this statue presents Amenhotep not simply as a living sovereign, but in the timeless guise of Osiris.
Summary:
Sandstone Colossal Osiride Statue of Amenhotep I
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c. 1525–1504 B.C.
From the Temple of Mentuhotep II, Deir el-Bahari, Thebes
British Museum. EA683
