Le torse de Ramsès, le pied de Mérenptah et le nez d‘Amenhotep : observations sur quelques statues royales des collections turinoises (Cat. 1381, 1382 et 3148)

The article focuses on three fragmentary New Kingdom royal statues from Thebes, now part of the collec- tions of the Museo Egizio. Stylistic analysis allows the three pieces (a statue in the praying posture, a base with a foot, and a colossal nose, respectively “Cat. 1381”, “1382” and “3148”) to be assigned to specific kings, despite mutilations or transformations due to reuse.
Far from being only an exercise of anecdotic attribution, studying statue fragments can throw light on the whole corpus of a king or a period, as well as on the decoration program of a site and the dialogue between a sculpture and its architectural surroundings. The article places special emphasis on the theme of reuse, also commonly called “usurpation”. The implications of this practice are still largely obscure, but the intentional modification of features clearly demonstrates the importance that the ancient Egyptians assigned to style, an interest that twenty-first-century Egyptologists should continue to manifest.