How Accessible Were Statues in Pharaonic Egypt?

Abstract

In ancient Egypt, statues provided a terrestrial anchor for nonphysical and preter natural entities, namely deities and the dead. Numbers of statues in wood and metal are likely to have been significant in Pharaonic Egypt, but these have not survived evenly, with a resulting bias in favour of stone. Manufacture of any image was a highly skilled, quasi- divine process in Pharaonic Egypt, effected chiefly by trained and properly initiated people. Somewhat paradoxically, therefore, Egyptian sculpture has often been perceived to be inherently accessible—a cultural judgement that has persistently informed recon structions of the statues’ original settings and functions. Egyptian deities were, as has been suggested, characterised by their multiplicity of manifestations. It might reasonably be assumed that colossal statues of Pharaoh and the gods—so emblematic of 'Ancient Egypt' in general—were the most visible and therefore the most accessible of sculptures for the Egyptians themselves.