Head of Sen-useret III
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Sésostris III, pharaon de legend, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, France, September 30, 2014- February 15, 2015, no. 4.
Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 12, 2015-January 24, 2016.
Sen-useret III is shown wearing the royal nemes, a striped headcloth. The uraeus, the rearing cobra over his forehead, protected him against evil forces.
This exceptional sculpture is in many respects-but not all-realistic. It is not completely how a mortal looks. The face is too smooth, lacking all the wrinkles of age; the head is over life-size. The sculpture is thus monumental, suggesting the pharaoh's omnipotence. The weariness apparent in his face might reflect the strain derived from ruling all Egypt, from being the sole shepherd of so large a flock.
With Paul and Marguerite Mallon, New York, by 1962;
Purchased from Paul and Marguerite Mallon by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1962.
Ross Taggart, “A Quartzite Head of Sesostris III,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 4, no. 2 (1962): 8-15.
Emma Hall, “Some Ancient Egyptian Sculpture in American Museums,” Apollo 88 (July 1968), 15-6.
John Cooney, “Art of the Ancient World.” Apollo 96 (December 1972), 476, fig. 3.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 26.
Bernard Bothmer, “Revealing Man’s Fate in Man’s Face,” Art News 79, no. 6 (1980): 124.
Ellen R. Goheen, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988), 21.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 24, 112.
Rita Freed. “Beauty and Perfection—Pharaonic Art,” in Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs, ed. Regine Schulz and Matthias Seidel (Cologne: Könemann, 1998), 336, fig. 19.
Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Art of the Ancient Mediterranean World (Nagoya and Boston: Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1999), 21.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 7, fig. 11.
Simon Connor, “Tête d’une statue colossale de Sésostris III,” in Sésostris III, pharaon de legend, ed. Fleur Morfoisse and Guillemette Andreu-Lanoe, exh. cat. (Lille: Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, 2014), 43-45, (repro.).
Rita Freed, “Les portraits royaux de Sésostris III,” in Sésostris III, pharaon de legend, ed. Fleur Morfoisse and Guillemette Andreu-Lanoe, exh. cat. (Lille: Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, 2014), 38.
Fleur Morfoisse and Guillemette Andreu-Lanoe, eds., Sésostris III, pharaon de legend, exh. cat. (Lille: Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, 2014), 274, no. 4, (repro.).
Dorothea Arnold, “Pharaoh: Power and Performance,” in Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, ed. Adela Oppenheim et al., exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015), 69.
Adela Oppenheim, “22-25. Sculptures of Senwoseret III,” in Ancient Egypt Transformed: The Middle Kingdom, ed. Adela Oppenheim et al., exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015), 78-83, (repro.)
Julian Zugazagoitia and Laura Spencer. Director's Highlights: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Celebrating 90 Years, ed. Kaitlyn Bunch (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), 84, (repro.).
