FAQ
Block Statue of Senwosret-senebnefny. Egypt, exact provenance not known. Middle Kingdom, late Dynasty 12, circa 1836–1759 B.C. Quartzite, 27 x 16 1/2 x 19 in. (68.6 x 41.9 x 48.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 39.602
Created between 1878 and 1814 B.C., this statue is one of seven that left Egypt in A.D. 1799 with Napoleon. He presented it to his wife, Josephine, as a souvenir of the French invasion of Egypt. Josephine displayed the statue at Malmaison, her fashionable chateau outside Paris. By 1841, the statue belonged to Count James-Alessandre Pourtalès-Gorgier (1775–1855), who exhibited it in his home in Paris. His family sold the statue in 1865 to Lord Amherst of Hackney, whose Egyptian collection was on view at Didlington Hall in Norfolk, England. It was here that the young Howard Carter—who later discovered Tutankhamun's tomb—first saw Egyptian art. In 1915, the Amherst family sold the statue to the American publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The Brooklyn Museum acquired the statue in 1939.
Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum