The King in Art

Kings were conventionally represented as idealized, perfect human beings in the prime of life. Their features and poses represented the ideals held by the Egyptians for the beauty, dignity, and ethical attitude becoming the gods and the king.


Tutankhamun wearing the blue crown
The face of the King, Tutankhamun, is the ideal of youth. The large hand belongs to the god Amun, who, by touching Tutankhamun, endorses his kingship.


Sphinx of Senwosret III (detail)
For a time in the Middle Kingdom, however, the king's face was represented as careworn, even old.


Akhenaten sacrificing a duck (detail)
During the Amarna Period, the traditional majestic and idealized features of the king were replaced with the elongated and exaggerated features of Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti.

Kings were depicted wearing royal regalia: the royal kilt, with an ornamental bull's tail, symbolizing superhuman power; a group of traditional crowns with the sacred uraeus, or cobra, at the forehead; the rectangular false beard; and the crook and flail held by the king across his chest. Kings' images were accompanied by hieroglyphs frequently used for royal identification.  Cartouches encircled the king's two most important names--his birth name, which identified him as son of Re, the sun god, and his throne name, nesut bity (ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt).  His images often bore symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt as well.

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