From Venerated to Mutilated

MENAHEM GRAYEVSKY / COURTESY OF THE SELZ FOUNDATION HAZOR EXCAVATIONS

All of the Egyptian statues from Hazor were found in the Upper City, which was the area of royal power, authority, and administration. The various statue fragments were recovered as isolated finds, with no signs of other nearby pieces. Most bear clear chisel marks, like this small, roughly 5-inch-tall midsection fragment of a human figure wearing a draped kilt, made during the Middle Kingdom (20th–18th centuries BCE). This suggests that they were intentionally damaged rather than having fallen or been broken by accident. Statue mutilation, whether for ideological or political reasons, is well attested in the ancient Near East: It symbolized the nullification and destruction of the people, culture, or ideas identified with the statue and, at the same time, the superiority of the people responsible for its destruction.

The Egyptian statues were first installed at Hazor as a sign of allegiance and respect toward Egypt and its age-old artistic traditions. When the site was destroyed towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, however, those discontented with the Egyptian regime invested considerable effort in not only mutilating the statues but also discarding their fragments throughout the Upper City. This effort was so successful that even thousands of years later, with state-of-the-art archaeological techniques, the original location of the statues and the exact function they had within Hazor’s royal court remain a mystery.