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Hatshepsut in a Devotional Attitude

New Kingdom
ca. 1479–1458 B.C.
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 115
For the ancient Egyptians, the ideal king was a young man in the prime of life. The physical reality was of less importance, so an old man, a child, or even a woman who held the titles of pharaoh could be represented in this ideal form, as in this representation of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. Although many of Hatshepsut's statues depict her as the ideal king, the inscriptions always allude to her feminine gender, sometimes by using both masculine and feminine grammatical forms, sometimes by including her personal name, Hatshepsut, which means "foremost of noble women."

This statue was one of a pair that stood on either side of a granite doorway on the upper terrace of Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahri. She is represented wearing a king's nemes-headcloth, false beard, and a kilt with a triangular front panel. Her pose, with both hands open and resting on the front of the kilt, is a devotional gesture that was first used in statues of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Senwosret III who lived some three hundred years before Hatshepsut. Senwosret had dedicated six statues of this type in the temple of the Middle Kingdom's founder, Mentuhotep II, which is just south of Hatshepsut's temple. As happened throughout Egyptian history, the official architecture and sculpture produced in Hatshepsut's reign was influenced by prototypes developed in earlier periods.

Statues that were in more prominent positions in Hatshepsut's temple, such as this one, the sphinxes (31.3.166), and the colossal kneeling statues (29.3.1), all portray Hatshepsut as the ideal king. Several others that may have been placed in less public areas such as the chapels on the upper terrace, depict her in a more feminine form including a seated statue in hard white limestone (29.3.2), and a granite statue which depicts here as a woman (29.3.3).

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Hatshepsut in a Devotional Attitude
  • Period: New Kingdom
  • Dynasty: Dynasty 18
  • Reign: Joint reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III
  • Date: ca. 1479–1458 B.C.
  • Geography: From Egypt, Upper Egypt, Thebes, Deir el-Bahri, Senenmut Quarry, MMA excavations, 1927–28
  • Medium: Granite, paint
  • Dimensions: H (without base) 242 cm (95 1/4 in); w. (of base) 74 cm (29 1/8 in); d. 111 cm (43 11/16 in)
  • Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1928
  • Object Number: 28.3.18
  • Curatorial Department: Egyptian Art

More Artwork

More Artwork
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Seated Statue of Hatshepsut, Indurated limestone, paint
Seated Statue of Hatshepsut
ca. 1479–1458 B.C.
Large Kneeling Statue of Hatshepsut, Granite
Large Kneeling Statue of Hatshepsut
ca. 1479–1458 B.C.
Sphinx of Hatshepsut, Granite, paint
Sphinx of Hatshepsut
ca. 1479–1458 B.C.
Statue of the Goddess Sakhmet, Granodiorite
Statue of the Goddess Sakhmet
ca. 1390–1352 B.C.
Doorjamb from a Temple of Ramesses II, Granite
Doorjamb from a Temple of Ramesses II
ca. 1279–1213 B.C.

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