Ancient Egyptian Statues: Their Many Lives and Deaths

Visit any Egyptian exhibit, and statues are among the objects you will see. From its beginnings in the fourth millennium BCE down to the Roman Empire, Egyptian culture revolved around statues to render visible both the human and the divine. Made in varied materials (ivory, stone, metal, wood), they came in every possible size, from colossal to a few centimeters tall. Stone made statues especially durable (metals were often melted down), but in this well-illustrated academic study, Egyptologist Simon Connor sets out to understand why many of the surviving stone statues had noses smashed, heads lopped off or divine beards chiselled away, exploring how the power people imbued them with often likely led to the figures being damaged. Ultimately, Connor finds that Egyptian statues reveal not only their own “lives and deaths” but also the worldviews and values of those who created, cared for, venerated and, sometimes, destroyed them.