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The king holds a harpoon in his right hand and a coiled rope in his left. The wooden base of this large statue measures approximately 16-1/2" x 4-1/2". The entire statue stands 17" tall.
On the walls of many private tombs both before and during the New Kingdom, the owner is often shown on a small raft fowling or fishing in the marshes. While the action illustrated by this statue is similar, the king hunts neither fish nor fowl, but the hippopotamus, the animal sacred to the god Seth. Like many other objects in the tomb, it relates to the traditional religion restored by Tutankhamun. Since the king is the embodiment of the falcon god Horus, the figure is a three-dimensional representation of the conflict between Horus and Seth, a mythical confrontation between these two gods. This statue, found in the Treasury, was one of a pair, and both, covered with linen, were inside a darkly varnished chest. Neither one, however, contained the hippopotamus of Seth, the enemy of Horus's father, Osiris. The omission of the hippopotamus is not accidental; it was never meant to be part of the composition. Seth being understood as an evil deity, his presence, even as an animal, the in the royal tomb would constitute a threat to the king; so his absence was deliberate.
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