I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
Prudhoe Lions
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These lions began as temple guardians in Nubia under Amenhotep III. Their inscriptions record every ruler who claimed them. The stone itself became a register of power.
At a glance
- Date
- c. 1370 BC, Eighteenth Dynasty
- Material
- Granite
- Dimensions
- 117 × 93 × 216 cm (7 ft 1 in)
- Type
- Sculpture (pair)
- Museum number
- EA2
Look closer
A relaxed, crossed-paw pose
Egyptian lion and sphinx figures often face forward with paws stretched straight ahead. These two do not. Each animal lies on its side, head turned, front paws crossed over one another. The pose is naturalistic rather than heraldic, and it is one of the first things a viewer notices once the scale of the blocks settles in.
Inscriptions layered like ownership marks
The surfaces carry more than a single royal name. Original texts relate to Amenhotep III. Later carving records Tutankhamun’s renewal of the monument for his predecessor, and a further note associates a move with Ay. Centuries on, the Kushite king Amanislo added his own names after taking the lions south. The stone reads as a sequence of claims rather than a single dedication.
Pair, scale, and shared number
They are a matched pair, not a lone guardian, and they share the British Museum registration EA2. At 117 centimetres (3 ft 10 in) high and 216 centimetres (7 ft 1 in) thick, each block has the weight of architectural sculpture. They were made to hold a doorway or approach, not a shelf, and that original function still shapes how they sit in a gallery.
The story
The Prudhoe Lions are a pair of red granite sculptures carved around 1370 BC, in the reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III. They stood as guardian figures at the Temple of Soleb in Nubia, a major royal foundation of that reign. Today they are in the British Museum, where the pair shares the inventory number EA2.
What distinguishes them at a glance is the pose. Instead of the stiffer traditional attitude of an Egyptian lion or sphinx — head forward, paws extended — each animal is shown lying on its side, head turned, front paws crossed. The modelling is relaxed and naturalistic for monumental granite work of this kind. The verified measurements give a height of 117 centimetres (3 ft 10 in), a width of 93 centimetres (3 ft 1 in) and a thickness of 216 centimetres (7 ft 1 in): blocks large enough to have framed an approach rather than decorated an interior niche.
Their later history is written on the surface. As with many Egyptian royal sculptures of high status, successive rulers left inscriptions that document reuse. The original texts relate to Amenhotep III. An inscription records Tutankhamun’s renewal of the monument: he who renewed the monument of his father, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Nebmare, image of Re, Son of Re, Amenophis, Ruler of Thebes. Another inscription indicates that the lions were moved by Ay, Tutankhamun’s successor. In the third century BC they were taken further south, to Jebel Barkal, by Amanislo, a Kushite king of Meroë. Following the same tradition, Amanislo had his names engraved on them.
In the early nineteenth century the lions were collected at Jebel Barkal by Lord Prudhoe. They were shipped to Cairo and then on to London. The British Consul General in Cairo helped secure the firmans — the permissions — required from the authorities. Lord Prudhoe donated the pair to the British Museum in 1835.
So the objects that survive are not only temple guardians from Soleb. They are also a portable archive of how later Egyptian and Kushite courts attached themselves to Amenhotep III’s prestige, and of how a nineteenth-century traveller’s acquisition brought that layered stone into a London collection.
Why it mattered then
At Soleb the lions were not free-standing curiosities. They were guardian figures for a temple built by Amenhotep III in Nubia, part of the monumental language that marked royal presence far south of Thebes. Their job was architectural and political at once: to watch an entrance and to announce who had the right to build there. The later inscriptions show that this function did not end when the original court passed. Tutankhamun’s renewal text ties his own piety to Amenhotep III. Ay’s involvement, and centuries later Amanislo’s removal of the pair to Jebel Barkal with new royal names cut into the granite, treat the sculptures as transferable tokens of legitimacy. To move and reinscribe them was to claim continuity with an earlier king rather than to discard his work. In that sense the lions mattered in their own time less as fixed portraits of animals than as durable royal property that could be renewed, relocated and re-signed.
Why it matters now
They still matter because they make several kinds of history visible on one pair of surfaces. First, they preserve a less rigid strand of Egyptian animal sculpture: the crossed paws and turned heads are specific, observable choices, not a generic sphinx formula. Second, the stacked inscriptions turn the objects into evidence for how monuments circulated — from Soleb to Jebel Barkal — and how Kushite as well as Egyptian rulers used older royal stone. Third, their path into the British Museum in 1835, via Lord Prudhoe and permissions secured in Cairo, is part of the wider nineteenth-century movement of antiquities from the Nile valley into European collections. Looking at them now is looking at temple sculpture, dynastic reuse and modern acquisition at the same time.
The surprising detail
The pair shares a single museum number, EA2, as if the two lions were one object. That administrative fact matches how they have travelled: always together from Soleb to Jebel Barkal to London, claimed and reinscribed as a set rather than split between rulers or sites. The stone records kings; the registration number records that the museum still treats them as inseparable.
What is disputed
The sequence of moves after Soleb is reconstructed largely from the inscriptions on the lions themselves. Those texts name renewals and later owners with useful clarity, but they do not describe the precise circumstances of each transfer, and the original architectural setting within the Temple of Soleb is no longer standing with the pair in place.
How it got here
In the early nineteenth century Lord Prudhoe collected the lions at Jebel Barkal. They were shipped to Cairo and then to London; the British Consul General in Cairo helped secure the firmans (permissions) from the authorities. Lord Prudhoe donated them to the British Museum in 1835, where they remain under the shared number EA2. The reference material records this path of acquisition and gift; it does not set out a modern repatriation claim specific to this pair.
Remember this
Temple guardians from Soleb whose granite surfaces became a ledger of every court that moved and claimed them.
Test yourself
Why do the later inscriptions on the Prudhoe Lions matter as much as the original dedication to Amenhotep III?
Because they show that the sculptures kept working as royal property long after Soleb. Tutankhamun’s renewal text, Ay’s move, and Amanislo’s transfer to Jebel Barkal with new names cut into the stone are not casual graffiti; they are deliberate claims of continuity. The lions remain readable as Amenhotep III’s work and, at the same time, as evidence for how later Egyptian and Kushite rulers reused older monuments to anchor their own authority.
Go deeper
- Prudhoe Lions · Wikipedia
- Prudhoe Lions — Wikidata · Wikidata
- Prudhoe Lions — collection record · britishmuseum.org
Image: Stephen Gidley, CC BY 2.0. Licence: CC BY 2.0. Source.