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Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

hyperallergic.com

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Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#51

Post by hprotagonist »

eznzt wrote: post #49
jazzyjackson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a kid once too, and we would make all kinds of drawings and penis jokes, but never in my years has a nose come across as phallic. I mean, what would the purpose of that symbolism be, you have to make a nose in any case if you're sculpting a statue to give a resting place for a spirit. It makes way more sense that, the mouth being closed, the breath enters and exits the nose. To make the statue uninhabitable by…

>I was a kid once too, and we would make all kinds of drawings and penis jokes, but never in my years has a nose come across as phallic. I agree.

Cyrano de Bergerac?

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#52

Post by dwohnitmok »

feralimal wrote: post #7
42droids wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it silly to assume that a nose would break of the easiest? Like how stretched out arms are usually broken. These statues are very old.

At a glance, the black ones appear to be made of granite - this is very tough! You might wonder how they were ever able to make such perfect representations with very hard material 3000+ years ago. And to then polish them so well that the polish still looks good after all this time, as on the picture at the top of that article. However (and whenever) they were made, once made, these are hard and most definitely do NO…

I've seen my fair share of cracked, chipped, and otherwise broken granite countertops. Granite can definitely break accidentally and dropping a granite statue could certainly break off chunks of it.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#54

Post by dwohnitmok »

munificent wrote: post #44
dTal wrote: post #14

Is there a reason to read more into it than "they're really old and brittle and noses are thin and stick out"?

Good question. Here's an article that answers it: https://hyperallergic.com/591628/why-are-the-noses-broken-on...

As far as I can tell the original article doesn't actually answer this. It assumes that the breakages are man-made (or restricts itself to only talking about those that are man-made) and then goes on to explain the breakages through that lens. Of course the explanations of those breakages are in turn at least some evidence that those breakages are indeed man-made, but the article doesn't go into explaining what proportion of damage is man-made.

I too am curious to what extent natural breakage plays a role which unfortunately the article doesn't really get into.

I've seen broken noses on a lot of very diverse sculptures from across the world (Mesoamerican sculptures, Easter Island Moai heads, Greco-Roman busts, Chinese Buddhist sculptures, etc.) so I'm inclined to think at least some of the broken noses on Egyptian sculptures can be attributed to natural damage.

I would've appreciated if the article explained the ratio of natural damage to man-made damage on these noses.

As it stands I'm still not sure whether Egyptian sculptures have an outsized number of broken noses or whether it's the same ratio as all other ancient sculptures.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#55

Post by dr-detroit »

stanrivers wrote: post #12

Part of me, completely without data and gut feel, thinks if I was going to smash a statue, I’m going for the head. A lot of these statues have broken heads too ... not all though. When I hit the head, I’m also a terrible person, meaning I’m definitely going for the face, no? What’s the part that I am likely to hit on the face first because it sticks out? What’s the part most likely to break on the head? Just a no-dat…

I'm less interested in what happened 40,000 years ago and more curious why its a dog whistle that brings so many cyberwarriors running if you dare to hint the academic timeline doesn't make any sense which it doesn't.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#56

Post by BeetleB »

jacobush wrote: post #42
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #37

I once took an Africana Studies course at UMass Boston and the professor taught us that the noses were broken off the statues due to the hatred of black peoples by white explorers over millennia. She also taught us that the ancient Egyptians were black and that it was black people that built the pyramids. When I innocently asked her why the slides she showed us seemed to show Egyptians as having more middle eastern a…

Maybe something about the Nubian rulers? Guest workers? I don't know.

The Nubians were a different group of people than most of the ancient Egyptian rulers we know. Nubians were in the South.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#57

Post by BeetleB »

yantrams wrote: post #45

I've seen the same phenomena in dozens of ancient temples in India I had the chance to visit, often attributed to Islamic conquests. The native Hindu rulers weren't any less sparing either when they conquered their rivals who worshipped a different deity.

Were not most of these statues discovered long after the Islamic conquest? If so, it doesn't sound like that would be the reason.

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#58

Post by kandeel4411 »

reaperducer wrote: post #43
nxmnxm99 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that done because Islam rejects idol worship and the visual depiction of prophets?

I don't know. All I know is what I overheard a tour guide telling her group when I was there. But it makes sense, because I saw the same thing at all of the Christian churches I visited in Turkey.

As a Muslim, I can confirm we only do it because we reject idol worship and the visual depiction of any living being, particularly prophets. We dont believe in any power being present in statues. Just wanted to let you know :)

Re: Why are the noses broken on Egyptian statues?

#59

Post by KoftaBob »

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #37

I once took an Africana Studies course at UMass Boston and the professor taught us that the noses were broken off the statues due to the hatred of black peoples by white explorers over millennia. She also taught us that the ancient Egyptians were black and that it was black people that built the pyramids. When I innocently asked her why the slides she showed us seemed to show Egyptians as having more middle eastern a…

Ironically, modern day Egyptians actually have slightly more Sub-Saharan African genetic markers than the Ancient Egyptians did.

Several genetic analyses have been done on Ancient Egyptian mummies, and they tend to be most closely related to modern-day people of the Levant (Syria/Lebanon).

So if your professor was calling them black as in Sub-Saharan, the genetic evidence says otherwise. If she meant black as in dark skin, then sure, it's the Egyptian sun we're talking about after all.

Source (one of many): https://www.washingtonpost.com./news/speaking-of-science/wp/...

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