Granite ram of Amun with King Taharqa-IMG 4397-black

Égypte ancienne (British Museum) (8699502196)

At least three ancient Egyptian granitic

gneiss Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures a ...

statues of Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa were displayed at the Temple of

Amun Amun (; also ''Amon'', ''Ammon'', ''Amen''; egy, jmn, reconstructed as ( Old Egyptian and early Middle Egyptian) → (later Middle Egyptian) → ( Late Egyptian), cop, Ⲁⲙⲟⲩⲛ, Amoun) romanized: ʾmn) was a major ancient Egypt ...

at Kawa in

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 ...

. Construction of the stone temple was started in 683 BC by the

pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: '' pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until th ...

Taharqa Taharqa, also spelled Taharka or Taharqo ( Egyptian: 𓇿𓉔𓃭𓈎 ''tꜣ-h-rw-k'', Akkadian: ''Tar-qu-u2'', , Manetho's ''Tarakos'', Strabo's ''Tearco''), was a pharaoh of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and qore (king) of the Kingdom of ...

. The ram is one of the animals sacred to Amun and several temples dedicated to Amun, including the one at

Karnak The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (, which was originally derived from ar, خورنق ''Khurnaq'' "fortified village"), comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Constru ...

, featured ram or ram-headed

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 ...

statues.

Discovery

The rams were found by Professor

Francis Llewellyn Griffith Francis Llewellyn Griffith (27 May 1862 – 14 March 1934) was an eminent British Egyptologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early life and education F. Ll. Griffith was born in Brighton on 27 May 1862 where his father, Rev. Dr. ...

during his excavations at the temple in 1930–1931. Two sets of paired sandstone bases, in front of the first and second pylons respectively, were found at the western approach to the stone temple, and figures of rams were found on two of them. The pairing ram to the one at 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 ...

is held at the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University o ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, where many of the artefacts from the excavations at Kawa are held. The British Museum's example was acquired in 1933 from Professor Griffith's Oxford Excavations in Nubia.

The British Museum statue

The base of the statue is 1.63m long and 0.63m wide, and the statue is 1.06m high. The ram is lying on its stomach with its forelegs folded under it, and between them it protects a standing figure of King Taharqa. A hole in the top of the ram's head indicates where a gilded disk would originally have fitted. A

hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...

ic inscription runs round the sides of the plinth from front to back and proclaims Taharqa as the son of Amun and

Mut Mut, also known as Maut and Mout, was a mother goddess worshipped in ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush in present-day North Sudan. In Meroitic, her name was pronounced mata): 𐦨𐦴. Her name means ''mother'' in the ancient Egyptian l ...

, Lady of Heaven, 'who fully satisfies the heart of his father Amun'.

The Ashmolean statue

The Ashmolean statue is displayed in the redesigned Egyptian and Nubian galleries, opened in 2011. In 2005, the then-

writer-in-residence Artist-in-residence, or artist residencies, encompass a wide spectrum of artistic programs which involve a collaboration between artists and hosting organisations, institutions, or communities. They are programs which provide artists with space a ...

at the Ashmolean Museum, Chuma Nwokolo, Jr, wrote a poem inspired by the statue and other exhibits about Taharqa. File:Shrine & Sphinx of Taharqa.jpg, Shrine and Sphinx of Taharqa. Taharqa appears between the legs of the Ram-Spinx,

File:Ram-Sphinx of Amun-Ra.jpg, The Ram-Spinx and Taharqa File:Egyptian display in Ashmolean - Flickr - gailhampshire.jpg, Close-up

The Khartoum statue

The third statue is displayed in the yard of the National Museum of Sudan, Khartoum.

Reading

*Mysliwiec, Karol ''Royal Portraiture of the Dynasties XXI-XXX'', 1988, pp. 33, 40. *''Amenophis III, Le Pharaon-Soleil'',(Catalogue de l'exposition de 1993 au Grand Palais, Paris 1993) Paris, 1993, p. 184 ig.[31.html" ;"title="1.html" ;"title="ig.[31">ig.[31">1.html" ;"title="ig.[31">ig.[31 *Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw (eds), ''Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology'' (Cambridge 2000), p. 34 *"S. R. K. G.", "Granite Ram from the Sudan" ''British Museum Quarterly'' 8, online a

References

External links

British Museum page on the statueMore detailed British Museum page

Photograph of one of the statues arriving at Queen's College, Oxford
{{British Museum Sculptures of ancient Egypt 7th-century BC works Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt Ancient Egyptian sculptures in the British Museum Collection of the Ashmolean Museum Sheep in art