Relief from a Battle Scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, August 2008

Reliefs from Battle Scenes
Early Dynasty 18, probably reign of Amenhotep II (ca. 1479-1400 BC)
From Thebes, el-Asaif (MMA expedition)
Painted Sandstone

Accession Numbers: 13.180.21 and 13.180.22

Early builders reused these older painted reliefs in the foundation of Ramesses IV's mortuary temple, subsequently excavated by the Metropolitan Museum. In the larger relief, Syrian soldiers are shown being trampled under the horses that pull the royal chariot, signalling the foreigners' defeat in battle by the might of the Egyptian pharaoh. The smaller relief shows Asiatics clinging to one another, probably following a battle.

Originally, these battle scenes were dated to the reign of Ramesses II. A recent study of their stylistic and and iconographic features, however, has caused scholars to redate them to the early Thutmoside period. This redating indicates that by the first half of the 18th Dynasty, monumental battle scenes had become part of the decorative scheme of a temple's exterior walls.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.