Among the thousands of objects in the Egyptian collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, one painted sandstone block stands out for its exceptional state of preservation. Discovered at Luxor in 1912 by Egyptologist Herbert Winlock during excavations at the site, the panel measures 115 centimetres long, just over 60 centimetres high, and weighs approximately 300 kilograms. It depicts an Egyptian royal chariot galloping over Western Asian soldiers, already struck down by arrows and trampled by the horses' hooves.1 For decades, specialists attributed it to the reign of Ramesses II. A recent re-reading of its style and architectural context now places it under Amenhotep II, approximately three centuries earlier, around 1427-1400 BCE.

Thutmose III smiting Canaanite enemies on the seventh pylon at Karnak
Thutmose III smiting Canaanite enemies on the seventh pylon at Karnak, c. 1450 BCE. The scene illustrates the same register of pharaonic propaganda as the Metropolitan Museum block. (Public domain / Wikimedia Commons)

The composition follows a well-established iconographic pattern in pharaonic art: the sovereign, always victorious, crushes his enemies with divine power. In the upper right corner, the horses of the royal chariot race forward at full gallop. Before them, three adversaries collapse, already pierced by arrows, while a fourth soldier contorts himself in a futile attempt to avoid the hooves. From their pointed beards and clothing, Egyptologists recognise Western Asian warriors, perhaps Syrians or Hyksos -- the Near Eastern invaders who had ruled the Nile delta for nearly two centuries before being expelled by the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty.2

Propaganda before reportage

For Catharine Roehrig, emeritus curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptian department, the scene records no specific military engagement. It shows the pharaohPharaohThe title of the ruler of ancient Egypt, regarded as a living god guaranteeing cosmic order (Maat), supreme head of state, army and worship.→ in his immutable role as Egypt's victorious defender -- a work of propaganda rather than a campaign report.1 In pharaonic art, the sovereign always crushes his enemies; the reverse is never depicted. These triumph scenes adorned the outer walls of temples to assert cosmic power, not to tally victories and losses from a particular battle. The generic enemy, recognisable by conventional ethnic markers, embodies less a specific nation than a perpetual threat that the pharaoh, as guarantor of world order, is destined to repel for eternity.

Bas-relief of Ramesses II in his war chariot, Abu Simbel temple
Bas-relief of Ramesses II in his war chariotWar chariotA light two-wheeled spoke-wheeled vehicle drawn by horses, built for combat or prestige; the oldest attested (c. 2000 BC) come from Sintashta graves in the Ural steppe.→, Abu Simbel temple. This type of martial scene, long believed to have been invented under the Ramessides, already existed three centuries earlier under Amenhotep II. (Diego Delso / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

What the re-reading of the Metropolitan block allows us to clarify is the chronology of this warrior repertoire in Egyptian monumental decoration. Until recently, historians believed these large battle compositions to be an invention of the Ramesside period, beginning with Ramesses I around 1295 BCE. The reattribution of the block to Amenhotep II, who reigned around 1427-1400 BCE, shows that such compositions already adorned the outer walls of temples in the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, nearly three centuries before Ramesses II.2 This is a significant revision for the history of Egyptian art: the precedents for Ramesside military propaganda lay within the pharaohs' own dynastic line.

A masterpiece saved by reuse

The remarkable state of preservation of the block has an unexpected explanation. Three centuries after its creation, builders incorporated it into the foundations of the funerary temple of Ramesses IV, who reigned around 1153-1147 BCE. Protected from light, wind, and the salt air that rapidly erodes sandstone and its pigments when exposed, the panel survived the millennia almost intact. When Herbert Winlock recovered it during the 1912 excavations, he judged it among the finest surviving examples of Egyptian imperial relief. Today, the surge of the horses, the disordered fall of bodies, and several pigments remain visible: the red of the flesh and the white of the kilts are still legible in places.1

Despite its considerable weight, the block made the journey from the foundations of Ramesses IV's temple to the New York collections, where it has been held since 1913 thanks to the Rogers Fund and the gift of Edward S. Harkness. It remains accessible to researchers and its museum record has been updated since the reattribution to Amenhotep II.

One uncertainty remains. In the absence of an inscription naming a specific campaign or victory, the vanquished figures depicted will remain anonymous. And the identity of the victorious pharaoh himself, though Amenhotep II is now the accepted attribution, still rests on stylistic analysis alone, without confirmation from a hieroglyphic text. The history of this block illustrates, in exemplary fashion, the dual nature of pharaonic art: at once testimony to exceptional technical skill and the staging of a power whose details remain, three millennia later, only partially legible.2