Together Again

Near the ancient fortress at Hu in Egypt, a British archeological expedition in 1898 turned up a tiny, beautifully chiseled stone head of a king. But the diggers could not find the rest of the statuette. The head, eventually acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Art, was thought to represent one of the Ptolemys, dating from about 200 B.C. But when Boston Egyptologist Bernard Bothmer came across the piece two years ago, he decided that it was a lot older than that.

Bothmer noted similarities to a statue of Amenhotep II (ruler of Egypt from 1448 to 1420 B.C.) at Thebes. When he read that the Louvre had another Amenhotep statue--headless--Bothmer swung into action like Sergeant Friday trying to identify a corpse. He trekked to Paris, compared the size and workmanship of the two pieces of sculpture. After long study, experts decided beyond doubt that the Boston head belonged to the Paris torso. Last week the results of Bothmer's artistic detective work were on view in the Boston Museum. Plaster casts of the body and head had been fitted together, forming a delicately detailed image of a firm-faced young king with a Mona Lisa smile, holding offerings for the gods. Amenhotep II, luckier than Humpty Dumpty, was all together again--at least in plaster--after some 3,000 years.

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