καιρός remembered

Feminine beauty

Five pillars, five depictions of Hathor, the goddess of beauty, joy and love. We are here in the temple complex on the islet of Philae in the Nile, south of Aswan. The temple dates from the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Three thousand years of Pharaonic rule are drawing to a close, and as we can see, Egyptian art, too, has already passed its zenith.

In this photograph, I have righted the top of Hatshepsut’s fallen obelisk in the Temple of Amun at Karnak. Hatshepsut, seated on the left before the sun god Amun-Re, was one of the few female pharaohs. It was around 1470 BC, during the 18th Dynasty, when the arts flourished. Hatshepsut often had herself depicted as a man – a man with refined feminine features.

And here we are still in the era of the 18th Dynasty, but 150 years later, in the tomb of Maya and Merit. During Tutankhamun’s reign, Maya was overseer of the treasury and public works, and Merit was his wife. I have used this photograph before in a different context (see my post ‘The Face of Beauty’), in which I expressed my admiration for the refined appearance of this beautiful woman’s face.
I recently read – and it can be seen in many Egyptian works of art – that depictions of men with certain feminine features were not uncommon during this period. We would therefore not be looking at a woman’s face here, but at that of a man – perhaps Maya himself!
I take another close look at the face in the photograph. A man?!
This mouth, these lips, this gaze … isn’t this feminine beauty in its purest form? Not Maya, but Merit?

Photo of the week: Pillars portraying Hathor in the Temple of Isis (3rd cent. BC) at Philae, Egypt 2000