In June of 2010, I found this statue in a Value Village thrift shop in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
At first glimpse, just another of countless millions of King Tut replicas. When I picked it up though, I was shocked to find it weighed two to three times more than I expected, and appeared to be carved of solid stone.
Extensive searches on the internet haven't turned up a match for the King's name in the cartouche. In fact, to my admittedly unlearned eye, it appears as if the inscription was never finished, as the top-most right space,(where traditionally the name of a god would have appeared regardless of where it occurred in the name) has only a faint line and v-shape.
There are extensive hieroglyphs on the back of the statue, that I'm working at deciphering - of course since I had no real pre-knowledge of the language it's taking a while. But what the heck, everyone needs a hobby!
Ancient Egyptians wrote both left-to-right and right-to-left, and the way that you tell which, is that the characters (as in human and animal figures) face towards the beginning of the message. Apparently, right-to-left is the most common. I find it curious that we almost always see the characters in the other direction, reflecting our preferred left-to-right orientation.
I've been searching the internet and have found fabulous resources, including the Glyphdoctors Open Egyptology forums, where professional Egyptologists and lay enthusiasts contribute to some amazing exchanges of information. One post there wondered why no-one ever mentioned how rare the double uraeus (cobra)/ vulture head-dress is that King Tut famously wore, It went on to mention that one of the few other Egyptian kings that wore the head-dress was Tut's mysterious uncle Smenkhkare.
I searched "Smenkhkare" and found this through Google images:
I find the resemblance to my statue uncanny. Particularly the slight dimple in the chin. Of course, many of the classic images from Tut's tomb are actually thought to have represented Smenkhkare, and been 'borrowed' to provide grave goods after Tut's untimely death.
This opened up several new lines of enquiry.
A German archeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt, excavating the city of Amarna in 1912, discovered the workshop of the royal sculptor under King Akhenaten, Thutmose. It was at this dig that the famous plaster bust of Nefertiti was discovered.
Could my statue have been uncovered at the same dig and somehow found its way to Edmonton? Is it a well made replica (and if it is, why wouldn't it have Tut's name in the cartouche?)
