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The afterlife of Hatshepsut’s statuary | Antiquity | Cambridge Core
The statuary of Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty, is believed to have been targeted for violent destruction by Thutmose III, her successor. Yet the condition of the statues recovered in the vicinity of Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri varies considerably and many survive with their faces virtually intact. Through the examination of archival material from the original excavations, the author offers an alternative, more utilitarian, explanation of the treatment of these statues. Rather than outright hostility, much of the damage may instead derive from the ‘deactivation’ of the statues and their reuse as raw material.
