For over three thousand years, ancient Egyptian sculptors created statues of deities, kings and elite officials and their families. These were set up mainly in temples or tombs and played a vital role in temple and funerary ritual, being places where non-physical entities deities, the royal ka-spirit and the ka-spirits of the dead could manifest themselves in this world. The book begins by examining the materials and techniques employed by sculptors and the various statue types and poses that occur. Next it explores the function of statues and the different contexts for which they were made. This is followed by a chapter explaining the notion of the ideal image: statues were not intended to be exact likenesses but rather ideal images reflecting the identity, role and status of the subject. The individual identity of a statue was usually provided by inscriptions, and the various texts found on statues are discussed together with the different types of relief decoration that occur on statue surfaces. A final chapter considers what was constant and what changed over time and looks at the influence that Egyptian statues had on the origins of monumental Greek sculpture.

Dr Gay Robins studied Egyptology at the University of Durham as an undergraduate and then went to Oxford to undertake research on queens of the Eighteenth Dynasty, obtaining a DPhil in 1981. She has published numerous articles relating to ancient Egyptian art, women and gender issues, and the living stature and physical proportions of the ancient Egyptians.