New discoveries

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Left: a black granite statue of the goddess Sekhmet Right: head of a colossal statue of Amenhotep III in red granite

A massive head of Amenhotep III and six statues of the goddess Sekhmet saw the light of day last week, Nevine El-Aref reports.

While clearing debris from the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III -- site of the Colossi of Memnon -- at Kom Al-Hettan on the Theban necropolis, a European-Egyptian excavation team has come across a finely-sculpted head of the Pharaoh along with six standing statues of the goddess Sekhmet, two of them with their lioness heads intact and four headless.

"They were found by chance during routine clearance of the Hypostyle Hall and the Peristyle Court," Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said. He said he was delighted that the red granite head of the Pharaoh, wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt. was found in perfect condition.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the discovery meant the head of the Pharaoh could now be joined to the lower part, which was discovered earlier by the same team.

Last season the site yielded the beautifully sculpted head of a queen and a pair of unidentified legs, which attracted considerable attention and raised some controversy as to whom they might belong. Some scholars suggested they were of an unknown queen; others commented that the position of the legs and feet suggested Graeco-Roman rather than Egyptian inspiration. The discovery of Amenhotep's head in the same area makes clear that the statue is of the beautiful Queen Tiye, wife of Amenhotep III and mother of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten.

"Her statue, with distinctive eyebrows, eyes and lips, will be reconstructed to stand beside the statue of her husband, Amenhotep III," Hawass said.

Hosni commented that because the temple of Amenhotep was a very large one, and excavations already carried show that there were numerous statues to adorn it, excavations would continue to find more of the temple's blocks.

The site of Kom Al-Hettan has enormous potential. The mortuary temple was listed in 1998 by the World Monument Watch as among the 100 most endangered monuments of the world. A European-Egyptian team working under the directorship of Hourig Sourouzian has already unearthed countless objects and architectural elements which have been cleaned, restored, and placed on concrete pedestals in what is rapidly developing into an open-air museum on the necropolis.