A Statue of a Hellenistic King

Abstract

The statue reproduced on Pl. II. was found two years ago in the village of Atfih which lies about forty-five miles south of Cairo on the edge of the eastern desert. Atfih preserves the name and occupies the site of the ancient Per nebt tep aht, the city of the cow-headed goddess Hathor. The Greeks, who identified Hathor with their own Aphrodite, translated the name into Aphroditopolis. The ruins of the town are covered by the modern village, but in the adjoining desert is a large cemetery, mainly of the Ptolemaic period, which Mr. Johnson has recently excavated in search of Greek papyrus.The statue was found accidentally by a labourer digging in the village and was secured for the Cairo Museum by the local Inspector of the Antiquities Department. It is made of a block of rather soft limestone and is considerably more than life size, the height of the figure without the plinth being 2·5 m. Both forearms are missing. The right leg from knee to ankle and parts of the left leg are restored in plaster. The features are badly damaged. There are no remains of paint or gilding on the surface of the limestone.