Standing Statue of Thutmose III

This grey schist statue depicts King Thutmose III, who regained his throne after 20 years of struggle with his aunt and stepmother, Queen Hatshepsut. The queen usurped his right to the throne of Egypt after the death of his father, her husband, King Thutmose II.

The statue represents Thutmose III as a great, athletic warrior king. The “nine-bows,” which refer to the traditional foes of Egypt, are depicted below the king’s feet. According to the inscriptions on the base, this statue was part of a group of fine sculptures that decorated the rooms of the Festival Hall of Thutmose III (Akh-menu) at Karnak.

“He was quite a remarkable fellow, this warrior prince of Thebes and the greatest of all generals in Egyptian history. Unlike many generals before and after him, he did not permit his military training and experience in war to narrow his intellect.

He was no military mechanic or a mere technician of war; instead, he was an integral man who retained his interest in things botanical, biological, religious, literary, aesthetic, and architectural to the end of his life. His broad understanding of his world sharpened his already literate, well-read mind, and his early education and training prepared him to reason clearly. He was a brilliant strategic thinker.

To him, Egypt owes the conception and implementation of a new strategic vision that permitted this once defeated and insular society to become a great nation of imperial dimensions that ruled all the world that an Egyptian would have considered worth knowing for more than five hundred years.”

― Thutmose III: The Military Biography of Egypt’s Greatest Warrior King, by Richard A. Gabriel (#aff)

New Kingdom, mid 18th Dynasty, reign of Thutmose III, ca. 1479-1425 BC. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 38234