Sphinx of Hatshepsut

The lion’s paws and muscular body give this sphinx its weight. Above them, a human face wears the striped royal headcloth called a nemes and a false beard. These are the signs of a pharaoh. The ruler represented here is Hatshepsut, a woman who governed Egypt during the fifteenth century BCE. Hatshepsut first acted as regent for the young Thutmose III, then ruled as his senior co-ruler. Many of her statues use the image of an ideal male king. The sculptor worked within a long-established language of royal appearance, even when the person occupying that role was a woman. This granite figure was one of at least six sphinxes at Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri. Their repeated forms belonged to a larger architectural setting. Here, the scale of a single survivor is easier to take in. Compare the careful description of the lion’s muscles with the smooth, composed royal face.