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# Ten Foot Egyptian Arriving at the Metropolitan Museum
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/ten-foot-egyptian-metropolitan-museum/
- Published: 2011-08-11T10:00:58.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:48:43.000Z
- Description: Berlin's major Egyptian Museum will be loaning a ten-foot-tall, almost nine-ton, 4,000-year-old regal sculpture to the Metropolitan Museum for tens years. It goes on display "later this month."
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: News, #image-position-hidden, Ancient Egypt, Egypt, Metropolitan Museum of Art, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-17 09:23 (2009-2011)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2011/08/berlinloan-met.jpg)

The ten-foot-tall ancient Egyptian sculpture making its way to New York. (Image courtesy Agyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz)

I admit to having a thing for monumental ancient Egyptian sculpture, it’s one of my things. So, when I heard that this ten-foot-tall, almost nine-ton, 4,000-year-old regal sculpture was going to be loaned for display at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum for the next ten years, I got excited.

The Middle Kingdom work, according to the New York mega museum, is a rarity in American institutions that aren’t particularly rich in “magnificent colossal statuary” — *love that term.*

Specialists suggest that the work depicts 12th Dynasty pharoah Amenemhat II but they aren’t certain.

I also adore the vivid description the Metropolitan Museum provided about the work that’s being loaned by Berlin’s [Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung](http://www.smb.museum/smb/sammlungen/details.php?objectId=2&ref=hyperallergic.com), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:

> The sculpture depicts a seated king — wearing only a kilt around the hips and upper legs — on a simple cubic throne with a short vertical seatback. A kind of blanket spread over the top of the seat hangs down at the back. The ceremonial bull’s tail that all pharaohs wore — attached to their belts, as a sign of their strength — is seen between the king’s legs. On his head is the royal head cloth called nemes; and over the forehead is the royal cobra, symbolizing the ruler’s awesome power. The pharaoh also wears a ceremonial (false) beard, and in his right hand he holds a piece of cloth, which is a status symbol (perhaps originally a cloth to wipe sweat from the forehead).

Hot!

The Metropolitan Museum couldn’t give a firm date as to when the bulky Egyptian will go on display but they did say “later this month.”

**UPDATE: The Metropolitan Museum tells us the statue is currently on view in the Great Hall but no word on the official “unveiling.”**