Coming to the throne at the tender age of twelve (or perhaps as young as six), little could have been expected of Amenhotep III. Yet, he showed bravery and prowess from a young age: records from later in his reign suggest (perhaps erroneously) that the child-king killed either 102 or 110 lions in the first ten years. His martial prowess was also tested early; in regnal year 5, when Amenhotep was aged either eleven or seventeen, a local chieftain called Ikheny revolted in Nubia. The Pharaoh led an expedition south, and victoriously put down the rebellion, though it is possible that the young king was more of a figurehead than a tactical decision-maker. The reign of Amenhotep III, however, was marked by an extended period of peace. The Empire thrived, and Amenhotep was able to devote unprecedented resources to embellishing the temples. Amenhotep was able to celebrate his heb-sed, the jubilee festival which marked thirty years of his reign, in regnal years 30, 34 and 37. He did so in some style: it is known that the opulent festivals were repeated by the Pharaohs of later Dynasties in an attempt to relive the heyday of Amenhotep’s reign. Few Egyptian Pharaohs were able to celebrate their own heb-sed, since reigns in the dangerous ancient Mediterranean were notoriously short. Amenhotep could have expected to pass the throne to his eldest son, Thutmose, and, indeed, inscriptions show that Thutmose was being groomed to succeed him. But in one of history’s most important accidents, Thutmose predeceased Amenhotep, and the throne instead passed to his second son, Amenhotep IV. He would later change his name to Akhenaten, and abandoned the millennia-old Egyptian religion in favour of the solar god Aten. Perhaps one of the first great free-thinkers in history, his experiment ultimately failed: Akhenaten’s successor, the fabled Tutankhamun, reversed the religious reforms, returned the capital to Memphis, and began the process of erasing his father’s memory.

There are perhaps more portraits of Amenhotep III than of any other Egyptian Pharaoh. He was a shameless self-promoter, who commissioned new portraiture to grace temples and chapels up and down the country, demonstrating the extent of his power. They ranged from the massive – the 18 m (60 ft) so-called Colossi of Memnon – to the tiny, and presented Amenhotep in an unprecedented range of guises, expressed in the different crowns he wore and poses he adopted. Thanks to the large number of extant portraits, it is possible to trace the development of Amenhotep’s royal image throughout the course of his reign. Early on, the Pharaoh’s portraits demonstrate continuity with those of his father, Thutmose IV. He is presented with a beak-shaped nose and a prognathous mouth and chin. Within the first few years, the nose straightens and the chin flattens. As his reign progressed, the facial features became at first fleshier and then more refined. The eyes are tilted downwards, so that even on smaller-scale portraits, Amenhotep appears to be looking down on the viewer. The nose remains fleshier and flatter, with broader nostrils and a round tip. Towards the end of his reign, the portraits, strangely, become more infantile: his eyes become larger and more almond shape, his face smaller in relation to his various crowns, his chin pointier. This recalls both the early age at which Amenhotep came to the throne, and reinforces his image as child of the gods. The slight weirdness of his later statuary begins to prefigure the strange and sinuous forms of his son Akhenaten’s famous Amarna style.

This portrait of Amenhotep is immediately recognisable. His almond-shaped eyes are tilted down, his kohl eye make-up extends nearly to his temples, his thick lips are drawn into a slight smile and extend beyond the line of his nose, his nose is flat and full with flaring nostrils, his forehead is short, and his chin is relatively flat, though his overall face-shape is ovoid and pointed. In this regard, and in the proportions of the face to the crown, which borders on the over-large, it bears a striking resemblance to the portrait of Amenhotep in the Cleveland Museum of Art (1952.513). The Pharaoh is depicted as wearing the ‘blue crown’ or ‘war crown’, A known by the Egyptian khepresh, which was favoured by the kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty in particular. Unlike in some of his earlier portraits (e.g. Walters Art Museum 22.107), where the crown is relatively slender and proportioned to his face, this crown is quite large, at similar relative proportions to portraits in the Louvre (A 25) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (56.138). His features are not, however, as alien and childlike as his very latest portraits (the so-called ‘Second Style’, e.g. Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 38248), which prefigure the art of the Amarna Period. Unlike in most of his portraits, the striking cobra (uraeus), a symbol of the serpent goddess Wadjet, is depicted merely as the foreparts of the snake, rather than having its body coiled around behind it, and trailing up the crown. This may be a function of the Barakat portrait’s small size, The presence of the khepresh may be intended to indicate the Pharaoh’s martial prowess – fictive, given the lack of military campaigns during his reign – but probably also has a host of other meanings. A detailed analysis of Amenhotep’s imagery in wall-paintings from the Theban Tombs has indicated that the khepresh was worn at moments where the Pharaoh acted on behalf of, and therefore became assimilated with, the various gods whose rituals he performed.

On the reverse, the fragmentary back pillar bears an inscription, which reads ‘the good king…’ (nfr nswt). Unusually, instead of the word nfr (‘good, perfect, beautiful’) being rendered with a single triliteral hieroglyph, which represents the heart and windpipe (Gardiner sign F35), the word instead spelled out phonetically, using the signs of water (n), a horned viper (f) and a mouth (r), uniliterl signs with a single phonetic value (Gardiner signs N35, I9 and D21, respectively). While this arrangement is unusual, it was a clear aesthetic choice by the sculptor: instead of a single slim vertical sign, three horizontal signs are used to populate the space above the next word – nswt (‘king’) – which consists of one tall sign (the sedge plant, sw, Gardiner sign M23) alongside two smaller horizontal signs (the loaf of bread, t, and water, n, Gardiner signs X1 and N35. respectively). The result is that the two words nfr and nswt take up approximately the same physical space in the rear column, and that – again for aesthetic reasons – the couplet begins and ends with the same letter (n, Gardiner sign N35), providing a visual balance to this important and widespread stock phrase.

References: similar portraits of Amenhotep can be found in Paris (Musée du Louvre A 25), New York (Metropolitan Museum of Art 56.138), Baltimore (Walters Art Museum 22.107), and Cleveland (Cleveland Museum of Art 1952.513).

Translation: ‘the Good King…’