Word: psamtik
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...ancient Egyptians loathed the changes that life brings. They sought an untroubled permanence in death. Pharaohs who could afford it built pyramids to shelter them in eternity. Others enshrined themselves differently in stone. One such was Sema-tawy-tefnakht, a blood relative of Pharaoh Psamtik I, who commissioned a stylized likeness of himself in rare and unfrugal alabaster, ordered it set in the temple of Amun at Karnak. Permanence, at least in alabaster, is not man's lot; as time passed, his statue was broken in half and thrown into a pit near the temple...
Sleuthing led Bothmer in 1956 to an Egyptian merchant's house in Luxor. The Virginia bust had borne the inscription of Psamtik I; the base in Luxor babbled in hieroglyphs that it was a seat for "the Count of Counts, Prince of Princes, Chief of Chiefs, Foremost Nobleman of the Companions, Eyes of the King in Upper Egypt, the King's Mouthpiece in Lower Egypt." The carving clearly identified Sema-tawy-tefnakht, known historically as Psamtik's chief minister. When the part purchased in Egypt was lifted into place in the U.S., Bothmer had his moment...
Alabaster Soul. Now united again after 2,600 years and surrounded by statuary from his period, Psamtik's minister has regained his look of permanence. A closed form in lustrous alabaster, his presence is pounded out of stone with a mallet as if hacked from timelessness by human persistence. The pose may be stiff, but the archaic smile on the ancient Egyptian's lips reflects an implicit belief that he has found a house for his soul and that his eyes gaze toward eternity. Yet without patient scholarship, he would only have added to the historic rubble...
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