The first full-frontal portrait of an Egyptian pharaoh has been discovered by archaeologists. It is thought to be more than 3500 years old.
The artefact was buried beneath a courtyard in front of a tomb in Luxor in southern Egypt, and was unearthed by a Spanish team of archaeologists.
The portrait is painted onto a wooden board measuring 50 by 30 centimetres and is unique. Other Egyptian paintings and drawings only ever show people in profile, which the artists may have thought would help identify their subjects more easily.
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Jose Manuel Galan, who discovered the picture with colleagues at the Instituto de Filologia, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cienticas, says that it probably dates from 1400 BC. He thinks it most probably depicts the pharaoh Tuthmosis III or his mother Hatshepsut.
The figure in the image is almost certainly royalty because he or she is wearing a trapezoid cloth garment known as a 鈥渘emes鈥� that was reserved for kings or queens.
Gods and foreigners
鈥淚t鈥檚 the first time a pharaoh has been depicted this way,鈥� Galan told New Scientist. However, other characters depicted in ancient Egyptian art have been seen head-on, such as gods, mythological characters and foreigners.
Galan believes that it may have been a rough drawing carried out by an art student, or a sketch for a statue carving.
Marcel Maree, an Egyptologist at the British Museum in London, agrees with the second interpretation. 鈥淚鈥檓 sure it鈥檚 a study for a carving of a statue,鈥� he told New Scientist, pointing to the presence of a red grid across the image. This device, still used by artists today, would have helped the sculptor transfer the image from the drawing on to the stone to be carved.
Maree also agrees with the Spanish team鈥檚 dating and believes that the figure in the drawing is indeed Tuthmosis III. The portrait will go on display in Luxor Museum in the next few months.