Did the Ancient Egyptians Execute Kneeling Captive Statues?

A life-sized statue of a bound, kneeling captive tells us quite the story of pharaohs and power in Ancient Egypt. The statue dates to the late Old Kingdom, circa 2246-2152 BCE. It likely originated from a Saqqara pyramid complex belonging to the 6th dynasty pharaoh Pepi II. Representing a foreign enemy of Egypt, the Kneeling Captive was ritually executed to demonstrate the king’s power, status, and control over the forces of chaos. Yes, you read that right – Ancient Egyptians executed the statue.

Let’s dig in by examining the Kneeling Captive in detail.

A Close Look at the Kneeling Captive

Our statue is of a kneeling man with arms bound behind his back. He’s held in this very uncomfortable position by a rope looped several times around the elbows. His chest and stomach jut forward, causing the skin to stretch over his rib cage. Our captive’s legs are sculpted along a rectangular base. His toes curl on the base, propping him up. Anyone doing the toe stretch yoga pose knows this hurts like a mother-effer.

The captive’s face is slightly lowered, and even though his nose is damaged, it was likely angular and pushed outward. He has a long face, strong brow line, high cheekbones above sunken cheeks, and large almond-shaped eyes. The beard is missing, but traces left behind tell us it was almost as wide as his mouth. A second captive statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows us what the beard would’ve looked like. Our original captive has nice, smooth hair falling to his shoulders, like an Egyptian short wig.¹

Who Does the Kneeling Captive Represent?

So, who was this man? Does the statue represent an actual person or a specific ethnic group?

Well, scholars traditionally identify him as non-Egyptian due to his facial features and the inclusion of a beard. They believe he was either from the north, Libya, or “Asiatic” from the east.² One scholar even goes so far as to identify his ethnicity as a tribesman of the Iuntiu. These guys were a group of Hamitic nomads living in the mountains of the eastern desert from Sinai down to Nubia.³ Damn, that’s specific. It’s also likely wrong—sorry dude.

During the Old Kingdom, Egyptians stereotyped foreigners, but they weren’t as detailed about it as they were later in the New Kingdom. As a foreigner, our Kneeling Captive was automatically labeled an enemy of Egypt. I know it’s a bummer to learn this, but human beings have been “othering” each other since the beginning of civilization.

Anyway, art historian Tara Prakash disagrees with previous scholars. She believes the captive doesn’t represent a specific person or ethnicity at all but is a mix of facial features from various cultures. This hodgepodge forms a “hybrid” other, an imaginary foreigner. She claims the hybrid was an artistic way to illustrate that the king’s power controlled all known enemies as well as those not yet identified.⁴

So, the man could be a representation of all enemies or just an enemy from a specific region. Either way, he’s not Egyptian.

How Does the Kneeling Captive Feel?

Whether or not the captive statue represents a real person or ethnic group, can we use stylistic and historical clues to figure out the emotions he’s conveying? If I were a captive, I would not be a happy camper. I’d be equally pissed off and terrified out of my mind.

According to scholars, the Kneeling Captive’s facial features and lowered head imbue the statue with an expression and aura of resignation, suffering, and grief.⁵ He’s definitely on the struggle bus.

Prakash, however, debunks this long-standing theory by explaining that the head’s forward tilt is from a modern reconstruction of the statue. More on that below, but the gist is that the head was not originally leaning forward. Additionally, she believes the expressive and exaggerated facial features seen in the heavy brow, large eyes, and prominent creases along the nose and mouth aren’t signs of pain or grief. They’re characteristics of an artistic style of statuary popular in the late Old Kingdom. Called the “Second Style,” Egyptians used it on all types of statues, not just kneeling captives.⁶

Despite the discussion of a “Second Style,” I still think our captive looks unhappy and, well, resigned to his fate. He seems rather stoic to me. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Kneeling Captives in Ancient Egyptian Art

Imagery of kings subduing foreigners was an established artistic motif by the 6th Dynasty. Prisoners appeared on wall reliefs and ceremonial palettes since the Egyptian Predynastic Period (which was way before the Old Kingdom). If anyone took Art History 101, you probably learned about the Narmer Palette, c. 3100 BCE. Palettes were stone tablets used to grind minerals for cosmetics, particularly eye makeup. This one has a rad scene of King Narmer smiting his enemies.

Life-sized captive statues, however, first appeared in the mid-5th dynasty with King Niuserre. They petered out after Pepi II, making them unique to the late Old Kingdom. This is the only period in Egyptian history that dedicated time and resources to produce “large-scale, free-standing, and three-dimensional statues of foreign enemies.”⁷ Large scale, indeed. Our Kneeling Captive is a big boy, at 34 inches high, 13 inches wide, 19.5 inches deep, and weighing in at 200 pounds. I’m aware of two more life-sized kneeling prisoners in museum collections. One of them is also at the Met (see his face above), and the other is in the British Museum.

Kneeling Captives on Display

Pharaohs originally displayed sculptures of bound captives in their pyramid complexes. An area of the complex called per-weru displayed the stone prisoners alongside battle and triumph scenes. They may have also lined the complex’s causeway. Bound captive sculptures have a sense of frontality to them, like most Egyptian art. But they also have details along the profile and back, suggesting people saw and interacted with them from all sides.

Off With His Head!

Egyptians interacting with stone prisoners is kind of an understatement. Most kneeling captive statues were ritually executed during ceremonies held at pyramid complexes. How do we know this? Many of them have breaks at the neck, shoulders, or mid-torso. Our Kneeling Captive probably met such a fate because he has a clean horizontal break through the body, just below the belt. His shoulders and left chest were also broken off, likely due to decapitation. Yeah, not only was he sliced in half, but he also lost his head. If you look closely at the photos above, you can see all the breaks. They’re below the belt, across and down the chest, and near the neck.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York investigated the statue using UV-induced luminescence imaging. They discovered the head probably didn’t belong to this body, but to another bound captive from Pepi II’s complex. In fact, Prakash did a bit of investigating of her own by delving into archival records. We love to see hardcore research solving ancient mysteries!

Restoration of the Kneeling Captive

Prakash discovered that art dealers known as the Khawam Brothers scooped up multiple heads from Pepi II’s pyramid complex in 1916. They also later acquired the bodies of captive statues and brought them to Vincent Diniacopoulos, a restorer of antiquities. Diniacopoulos combined the bodies and heads to sell completed statues instead of fragments. He restored the Kneeling Captive in 1937, ten years before the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired it.⁸

UV imaging also revealed three important things about our Kneeling Captive:

1. The statue consists of four fragments. This means Diniacopoulos put it back together with pieces from different statues, a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. Or Evan Peters’ character from American Horror Story’s third season, Coven.
2. The forward lean of the head we discussed earlier is Diniacopoulos’ modern interpretation of the captive’s emotions. He purposely did it to make the statue look resigned and sad.
3. Most of the upper part of the body is filled in with modern plaster.

Pharaohs and Power

The fact that the statue has the head of one captive and the body of another strongly suggests that Ancient Egyptians ritually executed and fragmented it in antiquity. That means the restoration of the statue into a complete figure is a modern take on ancient art. Ancient Egyptians would’ve meant for the statue and his fellow captives to lie broken on the floor, heads rolling everywhere, and body parts strewn all over the place.

Deliberately broken statues in the per-weru or causeway would’ve enforced the idea of kingship in the Old Kingdom. One of the king’s main roles was to maintain order in the face of chaos. The king was the embodiment of order, whereas a foreign enemy represented chaos. If the king subdues the enemy, he’s symbolically keeping chaos under control.⁹

Scenes of kings smiting enemies were very popular in Ancient Egypt because violence was integral to kingship. How more violent can you get with executed and decapitated statues everywhere?

Today, our captive is whole again, and there is no actual violence to witness. Pepi II is not standing over the captive about to smite his ass. His body parts aren’t lying around. Still, we as modern viewers know the story. We know what lies ahead. We know the violence that will inevitably come. The Kneeling Statue still tells us the king of Egypt is all-powerful and will destroy his enemies.

What do you think our Kneeling Captive was feeling? Was he stoic, resigned, scared, or unemotional? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Footnotes

1. Hill, “Kneeling Captive,” 440, Prakash, “Prisoner Statutes,” 196. ↩︎
2. Hill, “Kneeling Captive,” 440, Prakash, “Prisoner Statutes,” 194. ↩︎
3. Hayes, Scepter of Egypt I, 115. ↩︎
4. Prakash, “The Prisoner Statues,” 194, 209-211. ↩︎
5. Hayes, Scepter of Egypt I, 115, Hill “Kneeling Captive,” 440, Prakash, “Prisoner Statues,” 206-207. ↩︎
6. Prakash, “Prisoner Statues,” 206-208. ↩︎
7. Prakash, “Prisoner Statues,” 191-192. ↩︎
8. Hayes, Scepter of Egypt I, 115, Prakash, “Prisoner Statues,” 198-200. ↩︎
9. Prakash, “The Prisoner Statues,” 192, 215. ↩︎

Bibliography & Further Reading

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Arnold, Dieter. “Old Kingdom Statues in Their Architectural Setting.” In Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids, 41-49. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999.

Hayes, William C. Scepter of Egypt I: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Middle Kingdom. Cambridge: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1953.

Hill, Marsha. “Kneeling Captive.” In Egyptian Art in the Age of the Pyramids, 440-441. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999.

Prakash, Tara. “Prisoner Statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum.” In Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 49, 197-221. Hamburg, 2020.

Prakash, Tara. Ancient Egyptian Prisoner Statues: Fragments of the Late Old Kingdom (Material and Visual Culture of Ancient Egypt, 8). Lockwood Press, 2022.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Statue of a Kneeling Captive.” Accessed November 10, 2024.