This colossal sphinx depicts a female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, who ruled from 1479 to 1458 B.C. She wasn’t the only female pharaoh, but she was one of the most important ones. Here, she’s shown wearing the ceremonial false beard – which all pharaohs wore, male and female. She also has the distinctive royal nemes head cloth.

Move around the body, and you’ll notice how the sculptor has carefully observed the powerful muscles of the lion’s sides and legs. Its posture is that of a guardian: calm yet attentive – and with paws planted, ready to leap up and pounce on an enemy. Look for the animal’s tail, elegantly wrapped around a hind leg. This is not a lion’s tail; but that of a bull. A bull’s tail was worn as part of the pharaoh’s royal costume, representing his power to bring forth life.

The remains of six granite sphinxes representing Hatshepsut were excavated in the late 1920s, by curators and archaeologists from The Metropolitan Museum. They found them broken into pieces, in a quarry close to Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple. Hatshepsut’s co-ruler, and eventual successor was Thutmose the Third. Late in his reign and about twenty years after Hatshepsut’s death, he had ordered that all the statues from her temple be removed and smashed. The reconstruction of this sphinx and of many other statues from thousands of excavated fragments was a major achievement of twentieth century archaeology. The filled-in areas on this statue are pieces that were never found. There is an entire room filled with reconstructed Hatshepsut statues. It’s gallery number twelve.