Finding Ancient Egypt's private moments

“Haremhab, the General Who Became King” put together by Dorothea Arnold, chairwoman of the department of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and running through to July 4.

The New York Times says: “Ms. Arnold’s exhibition brings out an aspect of Egyptian art that has virtually gone unnoticed. The long-held myth of a culture solely concerned with timeless icons of gods and kings in postures dictated by canon is finally dispelled, even if that is not the purpose of the show. Viewers discover that images of humans lost in their private thoughts and beset by anxiety already appeared in Egypt by the mid-third millennium BC.”

Haremhab: the general who became pharaoh

A statue of Haremhab (reigned ca. 1316), created before he became king, shows the general as a scribe and thus an administrator and wise man. This statue - the most famous three-dimensional image of Haremhab - is the focus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Haremhab, The General Who Became King, opening November 16 in New York.

The display will feature some 70 additional objects in various media-wall reliefs, works on papyrus, statuettes, and garment fragments-from the holdings of the Metropolitan, with the addition of a pivotal loan from the Louvre and another from a New York private collection.

The Metropolitan Museum's magnificent life-size statue of Haremhab as a scribe is the centrepiece of the exhibition.

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