Excavated Statue Head of an Unknown Egyptian Pharaoh Baffles Experts

A sculpture of a mysterious Egyptian pharaoh's head, found at the antiquated city of Hazor in Israel, goes back around 4,300 years, to a period when Egyptians were building pyramids. The figure was crushed around 3,300 years prior, possibly after an Israeli ancient army led by King Joshua pulverized the city, analysts have found.

Specialists said the piece, unearthed and remade in 1995 and talked about in the as of late distributed book "Hazor VII: The 1990-2012 Excavations, the Bronze Age" (Israel Exploration Society, 2017), abandons them with various inquiries: Which pharaoh does it show? Why was it transported to Hazor? Also, why did it get by for a thousand years previously being crushed separated when Hazor was demolished?

Eastern walls from King Solomon's period in Tel Hazor, Israel

"The history of the statue was surely quite complex, and the kingdom of Hazor must have been eager to use and display a prestige object connected to Egyptian royal imagery," wrote Egyptologists Dimitri Laboury and Simon Connor in a report published in the book. [Biblical Battles: 12 Ancient Wars Lifted from the Bible]

"The person depicted wears a short, close-fitting, curled cap wig, topped by a uraeus, the solar cobra that rises above the forehead of [a] pharaoh in ancient Egyptian iconography, thus identifying our character as a king of Egypt beyond any doubt," wrote Laboury, a senior research associate at the Belgian National Foundation for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) at the University of Liège, and Connor, a curator at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.

"The rendering of these facial features on the piece from Hazor are characteristic of the 5th Dynasty [circa 2465-2323 B.C.], although it does not seem possible to determine with any certainty which king it depicts," wrote Laboury and Connor, who additionally noticed that the head was once part of a bigger statue.

Hazor was sacked in the mid-thirteenth century B.C., probably by an Israeli power drove by King Joshua. A passage from the Book of Joshua in the Bible claims that Joshua's power wrecked an expansive armed force led by "Jabin," a lord of Hazor. The section additionally says that in the wake of devastating the armed force, Joshua sacked Hazor.

"Joshua turned back and captured Hazor and put its king to the sword," the biblical text from Joshua 11:10-11 reads. "Everyone in it, they put to the sword. They totally destroyed them, not sparing anyone that breathed, and he [Joshua] burned Hazor itself."

Regardless of whether the Israelis were really the group that devastated Hazor is subject to much debate among researchers, yet studies demonstrate that the city was sacked and this figure was one of the numerous statues that were crushed.