Khafre Enthroned

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Khafre Enthroned is an extraordinary funerary statue commemorating Pharaoh Khafre, who ruled ancient Egypt during the Fourth dynasty around 2570 BC. This magnificent statue now resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Constructed from anorthosite gneiss, a valuable and extremely hard dark stone extracted from royal quarries located 400 miles down the Nile River, it showcases Khafre's significance as a ruler. The statue was carefully crafted for the Pharaoh's valley temple near the Great Sphinx, part of the necropolis used in funeral rituals during ancient times. This Old Kingdom sculpture holds great importance in Egyptian tombs as a substitute dwelling place for the Pharaoh's ka, the life force that accompanies an individual with a kind of other self after death. As the ka leaves the body to enter the afterlife, it still requires a resting place: the statue. This three-dimensional sculpture showcases Khafre seated, one of the fundamental formulaic types used during the Old Kingdom to depict the human figure. Mummification played a pivotal role in ancient Egyptian culture, involving a 70-day process to guarantee immortality for the pharaoh. Starting from the 3rd millennium BCE, if the pharaoh's mummy suffered damage, a ka statue was created to ensure the deceased's identity remained intact by providing a substitute dwelling place for their life force.