Page 22 - Buzz Magazine - Issue 4 Fall 2022 | University of Rochester

ARTS AND COMMUNITY A

B
Why are noses broken
on Egyptian statues?

Find out and learn more at the Memorial Art Gallery’s
exhibition, Striking Power: Iconoclasm in Ancient Egypt
November 20, 2022 – March 5, 2023

Ancient Egyptians believed that Striking Power examines the patterns
deities, as well as the souls of the of damage inflicted on statues and C
deceased, could inhabit stone, wood, other works for political, religious,
or clay images, allowing supernatural and criminal reasons—the results of
beings to have a presence in this organized campaigns of destruction.
world. In those long ago societies, The exhibition also illustrates how
religion and politics were inextricably damage to a statue can be
linked. As a result, statues held interpreted to reveal who broke
powerful ties to all three. People it and the motivation behind
believed that rituals associated with the destruction. View damaged
those statues could give power works—from fragmented heads
to supernatural forces. They also to altered inscriptions—paired
believed that those powers could be alongside undamaged
deactivated by selectively destroying works for insight and
specific body parts and royal or divine a step back in time.
symbols on them.

A. Face and Shoulder from an Anthropoid Sarcophagus, 332–30 B.C.E. Black basalt, 18 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 5 in. (47 x 52.1 x 12.7 cm).
Brooklyn Museum; Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1516E. B. Ptolemy II, Ptolemaic Period, reign of Ptolemy II, 285–246 B.C.E.,
From Benha il-Assel, Egypt. Limestone, 17 15/16 × 14 × 8 1/4 in. (45.6 × 35.6 × 21 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour
Fund, 37.37E. C. Seated Statue of the Superintendent of the Granary Irukaptah, circa 2425–2350 B.C.E. Limestone, 29 3/4 x 11
x 16 9/16 in. (75.5 x 28 x 42 cm). Brooklyn Museum; Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.20E. (All photos: Brooklyn Museum)

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