Face of a Statue of Thutmose III with a Modern Replica Body

When I spotted this piece in Cairo (acc. no.: JE90237) it looked awfully familiar – I had seen something identical looking the year before in the NY Met Museum! This one has the real face and a replica body, the Met Museum one has a replica face and the real body.

The two parts ended up in two different places because they were found decades apart when the rules for where objects went were different. The body was found by the EEF in 1907 in the temple of Montuhotep II at Deir el Bahri, and gifted to the Met Museum.

But the face wasn’t found until 1964 when a team of Polish archaeologists were working on the Temple of Thutmose III, which stands between Montuhotep II’s temple and that of Hatshepsut.

The replicas were made in the 1990s, and now both objects are displayed with a replica of their other part!