¶ … Senwosret III
Faces on the statues of Senwosret III (circa 1878-41 BC) show more individualized features than those of his predecessors, and also portray the image of a king exhausted by service to his people and country. At the same time, though, his body was always portrayed as powerful and muscular, befitting a great warrior and leader of men in battle. Hymns, monuments and inscriptions celebrated his courage in battle, and how he terrified and crushed his enemies, which was standard in the royal ideology of Egypt. By Egyptian standards, the Sphinx erected on the plain of Giza as the guardian of the pyramids was the normal and acceptable way to portray the kings and divinities, having the faces of humans but the bodies of lions. Only the odd statues of the pharaoh Akhenaten during the New Kingdom broke with this tradition, and were therefore considered highly eccentric and perhaps even evil and demented. Unlike Akhenaten, though, Senwosret III honored the traditional gods of Egypt, and even expanded the worship of Osiris, the god on the dead and the underworld, as the common people began to hope for the same type of afterlife that was once reserved only for the kings and nobles. For whatever reason, perhaps because questions lingered about whether his dynasty was legitimately of royal descent, Senwosret took steps to broaden the popular support and appeal of his reign, humanizing his image, opening up the administration to commoners and even promising them an opportunity to enter the afterlife that had once been reserved only for kings and aristocrats.
Senwosret III was described as being over seven feet tall, which would indeed have made him appear to be a giant...
Royal hymns praised his leadership and bravery in battle, as was customary, calling him "a dike that keeps back the river's floodwaters," and like his father and grandfather, he "wanted to rule the Two Lands as one nation, and he intended to protect the country's international trade interests" (Baker and Baker 71). For this reason, he increased the number and size of the forts and garrisons in Nubia to protect the gold mines in that distant province. He reorganized the administration of Egypt into three districts, appointing a governor in each that reported directly to the vizier (royal chancellor) and also established councils to oversee economic, agricultural and military policy. Under his rule, these were opened to "artisans, farmers, merchants, and traders," giving the middle class a share of the administration for the first time (Baker and Baker 72). These lower strata also came to believe that the afterlife would be open to them, and not only to kings and nobles, and under Senwosret III the worship of Osiris became a popular cult for the first time, with the pharaoh constructing more temples to the god of the dead in Abydos and other locations.
His statuary faces appear in a more realistic and human style compared to those of his predecessors, although this does not necessarily mean that he no longer had god-like attributes of great strength, power and determination. Possibly he was considered "a human whom the gods had chosen to rule their beloved nation" and endowed with special qualities, although there were also persistent questions about the lineage of his dynasty as whether its members were…
