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[Pakira]

Egyptologists find goddess, Nubian king statues

CAIRO, January 31 -- Egyptologists have discovered two 3 400-year-old statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet and a rare statue depicting a king with Nubian features, an archaeological conservation director said yesterday.

War goddess Sekhmet embodied the cruel powers of the sun, and was also responsible for both curing and causing illness.

The excavation team believe the statues were excavated from elsewhere, then hidden at a temple in Luxor either for later sale or to protect them from robbers.



One of the Sekhmet statues, made of granite and about 150cm high, was holding a symbol representing life and a scroll of papyrus.

"It's extremely beautiful. Only the feet are missing and the base," said Hourig Sourouzian, the German-Armenian director of the international conservation team which found the statues.

The team, working under the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, found the statues at the temple of 18th-dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III in Luxor while working on a project to protect the temple from Nile water.



They found only the black diorite bust of the other Sekhmet statue. The bust, about one metre high, suggested the statue was of monumental proportions, Sourouzian said.

They also discovered the red granite head of a statue of a king they believe to be a ruler from the Kushite period, which lasted from 747 to 656 BC. Kush was south of ancient Egypt in Nubia, now mostly part of Sudan.





"As soon as we cleaned it we realised it's a Kushite king with southern features, with full cheeks and very bulging lips...Statues of Kushite kings are extremely rare, especially here in Egypt," Sourouzian said.

None of the statues belonged in the area where they were buried, she said, leading her to believe they were deliberately moved and hidden for later retrieval.

"These were possibly deposited in the first half of the 20th or maybe the 19th century, when agents of collectors were sent here to send back statues," she said, adding that archaeologists may have buried them to keep them from robbers. - Reuters





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