An Egyptian pharaoh decided to immortalize his historical deeds forever — that was the beginning of portraits.
It was the 27th century BC, and the egyptian pharaoh Khasekhemwy, of the 2nd dynasty, achieved the feat of unifying Upper and Lower Egypt, after a period of instability.
He then decided to reward himself for his achievements: he had two statues made to represent him, becoming the first pharaoh to order his own image.
But not only that: the stone statues, one limestone and the other made of schist, that he commissioned became the first of which there are records depicting a real historical figure.
As highlighted in the two figures, discovered between 1897 e 1898 in the temple of Hierakonpolis, the pharaoh appears wearing a long robe from the royal renewal festival Heb Sed and the white crown of Upper Egypt. No white crown was discovered in any tomb of pharaohs in Ancient Egypt, so it is believed that it may have been passed down from generation to generation by Egyptian royalty.
As, with approximately 62 centimeters tallare on display in different places: one in the Ashmolean Museum, in the United Kingdom, and another in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the latter having lost half of its head, although it is in good condition.
The base of both statues represents a military campaign led by the king against the inhabitants of the Delta, and it is even possible to read the number of enemies killed by the king’s army: 47,209, a number that is currently considered inflated.
This pharaoh was a pioneer in the representation of historical figures in stone, a role until then reserved only for deities or mythological figures. According to the LBV, this raising of the bar allowed the monarch to deify himself, becoming a kind of “living god”.
A sitting posturein addition to allowing more efficient use of stone blocks, it also conveys a position of authority, and the monarch seems ready to rise at any moment to attack enemies.
Throughout the various Egyptian dynasties, the pose was repeated, and pharaohs (and others) adopted commissioning their self-portraits as a recurring practice — until today.
