NEW KINGDOM, 20TH DYNASTY, PROBABLY REIGN OF RAMESSES III, CIRCA 1183-1152 B.C.

Representing a young king striding and holding a scepter and leaning on a staff (both now missing), the pose of this diminutive figure is one rarely encountered in stone statuary, but more typically found in bronze or wooden sculpture due to the malleability inherent in those media. The rounded, unlined face and slender limbs and waist give an impression of the king’s youth. His royal identity is indicated by the presence of the uraeus, and he wears a typical striated shendyt kilt. The eyes and curving eyebrows were originally inlaid.
A distinctive feature is the so-called lappet wig he wears, here rendered with two long, straight attachments that hang freely, ending in squared ends. Often associated with military contexts, the lappet wig is well-known in the sculpture and relief of Dynasty 19, but the style shown here with long, narrow lappets is more typical of Dynasty 20 statuary, especially the portraits of Ramesses III. An inscribed granite statuette in the Museu Egipci in Barcelona of Ramesses III as a standard-bearer features a similarly rounded face and the helmet-like treatment of the wig, also seen in a head with inlaid eyes attributed by Mojsov to Ramesses III (Cairo CG 599). Inlaid eyes are a feature often seen in the sculpture of Ramesses III, and his reign was according to Mojsov the last of the New Kingdom to employ this technique, see Bojana Mojsov in E. Cline and D. O’Connor, eds., Ramesses III. The Life and Times of Egypt’s Last Hero, Ann Arbor, 2012, pp. 292-97.