Abstract :
[en] Publication of a doctoral thesis that aimed at defining the significance of the statuary of Thutmosis / Thutmose III, 5th pharaoh of the Ancient Egyptian 18th Dynasty (ca 1478-1425 BC). Given the importance of the corpus (162 items) and the different aspects of the meaning and function of royal statues in Ancient Egypt, which are not only religious monuments destined for a temple or a tomb, but also political portraits, the analysis is divided in four parts, of uneven length. In the introduction, the author draws attention on the fame of Thutmose III as a monarch and on the richness and quality of his statuary. In Part 1, prolegomena, the author introduces the framework for this investigation, i.e. the chronology of the reign and the methods to be applied in this study of the evolution of the statuary of an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. In Part 2, the documentation is presented in a descriptive catalogue which is divided into statues datable by their inscriptions or their archaeological context (C1-125), statues attributed to Thutmose III on the basis of their style or archaeological context (A1-22) and, further, statues of problematic attribution (P1-7), with a final section on fragments of bases or dorsal pillars that have no iconographic significance (Fr1-8). The following typological analysis of all clothing attributes worn by the king and of the eleven statue postures and types make it possible to define, to classify and to interpet the variability of these iconographic elements, not only with the purpose to describe as exactly as possible the repertoire used in this firs well-documented ensemble of royal sculptures since the Middle Kingdom but also to establish the meaning of each statue type as integral part of a religious monument. An appendix on the application of polychromy on the statues concludes this part. In the diachronically oriented Part 3 the crucial problem of the evolution of the statuary of the king is investigated. The documentation is, however, composed in such a way that the several iconographic phases cannot be presented in the order of the reign. Methodologically, the author is compelled to start with the analysis of statues that are datable with absolute certainty, thereby obtaining criteria to be applied to more problematically datable pieces. The author begins with the statues from the Djeser-akhet temple at Deir el-Bahari, which are contemporaneous with the start of the damnation memoriae of queen Hatshepsut in the regnal years 42-3. Next, he studies the statues from the Akhmenu at Karnak, which date from the beginning of the sole reign after year 20, and he considers the king's political attitude to Hatshepsut at the time. After the analysis of the statues of the fourth decade of the reign in the light of the king's politics and of the statues from the coregency period in the light of Hatshepsut's attitude towards the young Thutmose III, the author finally considers the dating problem of three statues, two of which belong to category C and one to category A. The somewhat random order in the discussion of the statuary phases is redressed in the chronologically ordered synthesis of the evolution of the statuary ot Thutmose III at the end of Part 3. In Part 4, the physiognomical evidence of the mummy is confronted with the way the king is portayed in different sculptural interpretations in the various phases of his reign, which approach is in fact a case study of the problem of the portrait and realism in Ancient Egyptian art. Bibliography and indexes of the statues arranged by their place of preservation or discovery, by their original provenance, and by their material, as well as an index of Urkuden IV references and a general index, added. (slightly modified version of the summary of the book on the On-line Egyptological Bibliography; review by J. Lipinska in Chronique d'Égypte LXXVI, n° 151-2 (2001), p. 135-7).
