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JOHN D. COONEY

larly cvident in the almond-shaped eyes with ihcir heavy, overhanging upper eyelids. As the new Amarna style apparcntly appeared First very late in the rcign of Amenhotep III in fuli tlush it would appear that this sculpture which is bcst dcscribed as retaining traces of the Amarna style must have bccn produced when the new style was on the wane.

Of the possible royal candidates for identification as the subject of this fine sculpture at least three can be eliminated at once. They are Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamen, all of whom are so well representcd in surviving portraits that it is evident at a glancc that they have no connection with the Schimmel sculpture. Of Smenkhare, we have no certain porlrail. but the chances are that did one survive, it would show- a stronger influence of the Amarna style. Only two possible candidates remain; Ay, the immediate successor of Tutankhamen, and Horemheb. The latter is wcll-known from scveral important sculptures and can not possibly be the subject of this sculpture. Ay is thus not only the most plausible candidate, but virtually the only possible one.

Unfortunately, there is a dearth of comparable materiał. About the only firmly identified likeness in the round of this king to havc rctained its head is the incomplete colossal seated statuę, now in Berlin, brought back by Lepsius from Mcdinct Habu *⁷. As this sculpture is inscribed, there is no doubt of its identification, but it shows Ay in advanccd age, already lined and worn, a form of portraiturc which probably owes much to the Amarna school. Clearly it has no relation to the Schimmel head which was worked in a highly idealizing style. The trend at the presumed time of this sculpture was clearly towards the old idealizing school.

Whilc a comparison between a sculpture in the round and a relief is less than ideał, in the present study a relief is about the sole closcly related document we havc for comparison. That relief is the handsome crystallinc limeslone fragment of a Nile god as King Ay which originally dccoratcd the side of a throne of a colossal statuę of this king erected at Mcdinct Habu, now in Boston ^l8. The rcscmblancc is so great that there is no doubt that the Schimmel head docs indeed represent King Ay (the resemblance is even morę striking on seeing the actual relief). Both works are of the same crystalline lime-stone, have the heavy overlapping upper eyelid, and lack the usual plastic cyebrow. Still another and very important point of resemblance is that the canthi of the Schimmel sculpture curve in and downwards, a characteristic shared by the Boston relief.

These detailed points of similarity are what lawyers cali «jury evidencc». They do indeed help to clinch the identification, but the argument advanced at the beginning of this section would, in the writefs opinion, be adequate toestablish the Schimmel sculpture as a portrait of Ay. It is a distinguished addilion to the corpus of royal works of art of late Dynasty XVIII.

¹⁷ Aldrcd. o c., no. 174

'* Ibid., no. 173.