LATE PERIOD, 30TH DYNASTY, REIGN OF NECTANEBO II, 360-343 B.C.

This royal portrait of the Nectanebo II is delicately sculpted of fine-grained limestone in shallow raised relief.  His head is shown in profile to the right, while the shoulders are represented frontally. The king wears the Khepresh or Blue Crown fronted by a uraeus, its hood fully displayed, the body undulating twice, with the tail rising up along the crown. His garment is enhanced with a beaded collar. The thin modeled brow and slanted eye, together with the round tip of the nose and slightly smiling mouth are all characteristics of depictions of Nectanebo II, the last native ruler of Egypt before the Macedonian conquest.  For other sculptor’s models assigned to him, see A. Wiese, Ägypten, Augenblicke der Ewigkeit, no. 196 and F. Tiradritti, Egitto a Milano. Nuove acquisizioni e restauri, p. 67.  The two loops of the uraeus are a distinctive feature that can be found on reliefs representing Nectanebo II, as seen on a fragment of a naos, now in Cairo and London (see K. Mysliwiec, Royal Portraiture of the Dynasties XXI-XXX, pl. LXXXVII), and is also shared with two heads sculpted in the round, one of quartzite at the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania and one of granite at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, pls. 10a and 10c in J. Josephson, Egyptian Royal Sculpture of the Late Period, 400-246 B.C.