Why are the Noses Broken?
After excavating hundreds of sculptures, nineteenth-century archaeologists recognized that a large number of Egyptian stone statues have broken noses. Egyptologists still find mutilated statues in sealed tombs that have not been disturbed for millennia, indicating that the breakage occurred in ancient times. There are several explanations for this phenomenon. The first and most practical is that when a statue falls forward, the nose is the first point to hit the ground. But many statues show evidence of deliberate disfiguring with a hammer and chisel, a fact that highlights the religious function of Egyptian art. The ancient Egyptians believed that tomb statues could be transformed into living beings through a funerary ritual called the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony. The “living statue” then served as an eternal home for the deceased’s soul. Smashing the nose effectively “killed” the statue. A tomb robber or a person anxious to destroy the soul of a dead enemy simply broke the statue’s
