The Prudhoe Lions, or Soleb Lions, are a pair of Ancient Egyptian red

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

monumental sculpture The term monumental sculpture is often used in art history and criticism, but not always consistently. It combines two concepts, one of function, and one of size, and may include an element of a third more subjective concept. It is often used for ...

s dating from the 18th Dynasty, around 1370 BC. They are now presented in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. The lions originally stood as guardian figures at the

Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...

Soleb Soleb is an ancient town in Nubia, in present-day Sudan. The site is located north of the third cataract of the Nile, on the western side of the Nile. It was discovered and described by Karl Richard Lepsius in 1844. Necropolis Soleb is also t ...

Nubia Nubia () ( Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sud ...

, which was built by the 18th Dynasty King

Amenhotep III Amenhotep III ( egy, jmn-ḥtp(.w), ''Amānəḥūtpū'' , "Amun is Satisfied"; Hellenized as Amenophis III), also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amenhotep the Great, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. According to different ...

. Unsurprisingly for such magnificent statues, the lions carry many inscriptions which record their re-use by various rulers. The original inscriptions relate to the pharaoh

. The renewal of the temple by

Tutankhamun Tutankhamun (, egy, twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn), Egyptological pronunciation Tutankhamen () (), sometimes referred to as King Tut, was an Egyptian pharaoh who was the last of his royal family to rule during the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ruled ...

is also recorded: "he who renewed the monument of (or 'for') his father, the

King of Upper and Lower Egypt The prenomen, also called cartouche name or throne name ( egy, 𓆥 nswt-bjtj "of the Sedge and Bee") of ancient Egypt, was one of the five royal names of pharaohs. The first pharaoh to have a Sedge and Bee name was Den during the First Dynas ...

, Lord of the Two Lands, Nebmare, image of Re, Son of Re, Amenophis, Ruler of Thebes" Another inscription indicates that they were moved by Ay, Tutankhamun's successor. In the 3rd century BC, the lions were moved to Jebel Barkal, a city to the south of the country by Amanislo, a

Kushite The Kingdom of Kush (; Egyptian: 𓎡𓄿𓈙 𓈉 ''kꜣš'', Assyrian: ''Kûsi'', in LXX grc, Κυς and Κυσι ; cop, ''Ecōš''; he, כּוּשׁ ''Kūš'') was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in wh ...

king of

Meroë Meroë (; also spelled ''Meroe''; Meroitic: or ; ar, مرواه, translit=Meruwah and ar, مروي, translit=Meruwi, label=none; grc, Μερόη, translit=Meróē) was an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east ...

. Following tradition, Amanislo also had his names engraved on the lions. In the early nineteenth century AD the lions were collected at Jebel Barkal by Lord Prudhoe, who had them shipped to Cairo and further on to London. According to the museum's blog on how objects came to be in the collection, "The British Consul General in Cairo helped secure the necessary '' firmans'' (permissions) from the authorities. Lord Prudhoe then donated the lions to the British Museum in 1835." The pair share the registration number EA 2. The lions measure approximately 1.20m high and 2.20m long. They are in a relaxed, naturalistic pose, lying on their sides with their heads turned to the side and their front paws crossed, rather than in the stiffer traditional pose of the

sphinx A sphinx ( , grc, σφίγξ , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon. In Greek tradition, the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of ...

or lion, with its head facing forwards and paws extended to the front.

Reading

*Edwards, I.E.S. "The Prudhoe Lions, Liverpool" ''Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology'', 26, p. 3-9 *T.G.H. James and W.V. Davies, ''Egyptian sculpture'' (London, The British Museum Press, 1983) *A.P. Kozloff and B.M. Bryan, ''Egypt's dazzling sun: Amenhotep'' (Cleveland Museum of Art, 1992) *Ruffle, John, "The journeys of Lord Prudhoe and Major Orlando Felix in Egypt, Nubia and the Levant; 1826-29" ''Travellers in Egypt'' edited by Paul Starkey and Janet Starkey. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998, p. 75-84 *Ruffle, John, "Lord Prudhoe and his lions" ''Sudan & Nubia: the Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin'' 2 (1998) p. 82-87 *Ruffle, John, "Lord Prudhoe and Major Felix: Hieroglyphiseurs Décidés" ''Egyptian Encounters'' (Cairo Papers in Social Science 23, no. 3 (2000)) *E.R. Russmann, ''Eternal Egypt: masterworks of'' (University of California Press, 2001) *N. Strudwick, ''Masterpieces of Ancient Egypt'', London 2006, pp. 158–9

References

External links

Sudan, Egypt and Nubia
web page for the gallery at the British Museum {{British Museum Ancient Egyptian sculptures in the British Museum Sculptures of ancient Egypt 14th-century BC works Sculptures of lions