Sphinx of Taharqo


The Sphinx of Taharqo is a granite gneiss statue of a sphinx with the face of Taharqo. He was a Nubian king, who was one of the 25th Egyptian Dynasty rulers of the Kingdom of Kush. It is now in the British Museum in London.
While the Sphinx of Taharqo is significantly smaller than the Giza Sphinx, it is notable for its prominent Egyptian and Kushite elements. The lion portrayed in the sphinx is done in classic Egyptian style, while the face of the Sphinx is clearly that of Taharqo. The hieroglyphs on the statue explain that it is a portrait of the great King Taharqo, the fourth pharaoh to rule over the combined kingdoms of Kush and Ancient Egypt during the Third Intermediate Period. The sphinx is made of sandy grey granite.

Taharqo

Taharqo was the last Nubian king who ruled over Egypt. He was defeated by the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Aššurbanipal. His reign lasted from 690 when he succeeded Shebitqo to his death in 664. He was the son of Piye and Abar and the father to his daughter, Amenirdis II. Taharqo was one of the rulers of Kush who dominated Egypt as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. He was a significantly important ruler, initiating a golden age for his new kingdom. Although Taharqo was not of Egyptian descent, he worshipped the Egyptian god Amun, built pyramids and temples in the Egyptian model, and had his officials write in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The statue

The statue is a sphinx, representing here the immense power of the Egyptian and Kushite pharaoh Taharqo, whose face is shown. The headdress bears two uraei, the symbols of kingship, and Taharqo's name appears in a cartouche on the sphinx's chest. The statue is called "a masterpiece of Kushite art."
The statue was excavated at Temple T, in the area east of the south-eastern part of the Temple of Amun at Kawa, in Nubia, during excavations there by the Archaeological Mission of the University of Oxford during the 1930s. Construction of the stone temple was started in 683 BC by Taharqo.
The statue is a British Museum "Highlight" object and was selected as the twenty-second object in the series A History of the World in 100 Objects selected by British Museum director Neil MacGregor and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2010. The sphinx is an image of a black pharaoh from sub-Saharan Africa, and its message was to point out that this black pharaoh stood in a long line of great Egyptian rulers.

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