The colossal statue of Amenhotep III and Tiye is a monolith group statue of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III of the eighteenth dynasty, his Great Royal Wife Tiye, and three of their daughters. It is the largest known dyad ever carved. The statue originally stood in Medinet Habu, Western Thebes.
The statue is made of limestone, its width is 4,4 m, its height is 7 m. The almond shaped eyes and curved eyebrows of the figures are of typical late 18th dynasty style. Amenhotep III wears the nemes headdress with uraeus, a false beard and a kilt; he is resting his hands on his knees. Queen Tiye is sitting on his left, her right arm is placed around her husband's waist. Her height is equal to that of the pharaoh, which shows her prominent status. She wears an ankle-length, close-fitting dress and a heavy wig with a vulture headdress, modius and double uraei. The cobras and the vulture are crowned, the proper right cobra wears the white crown of Upper Egypt, while the proper left one wears the red crown of Lower Egypt.
The three smaller figures depict three of their daughters. Princess Henuttaneb, standing between her parents, is depicted as a grown woman, in a close-fitting dress and a full wig with modius and plumes but without uraei (this is the only difference between her mother's headdress and hers). Next to Amenhotep stands the damaged figure of a younger daughter, Nebetah, while next to Tiye stands the even more damaged figure of another princess, whose name has been lost. The dyad is one of only two statues depicting Henuttaneb, and the only one of Nebetah.
The statue is likely to have been carved around the first sed festival of Amenhotep III. Arielle Kozloff writes that the age of the daughters depicted on the monument, especially that of Henuttaneb, and the style of Queen Tiye's wig, which was "at its most developed, nearly shrouding her face" suggests that the statue was made during the third decade of the king's reign. It is possible that it was made from the good quality limestone which was removed to create the open courtyard of TT192 – a huge tomb belonging to Queen Tiye's steward Kheruef, work on which was started around this time.
The eldest daughter of the royal couple, Sitamun is absent from the statue group, probably because she was elevated to the rank of great royal wife by Year 30 of Amenhotep's reign. Henuttaneb was the second or third daughter, born either before or after Iset, who became queen in Year 34. Henuttaneb is nowhere mentioned as a queen, but on this colossus she is described as "the companion of Horus, who is in his heart". This is the only instance of this queenly title being given to a princess, and her name is sometimes written in a cartouche, which may indicate that she was elevated to queen like Sitamun and Iset. The third princess on the statue, whose name is destroyed is sometimes tentatively identified as Iset, but Amenhotep may have had as many as sixteen daughters, not all of whom are known to us.
The statue belonged to the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, which has been mostly destroyed since, but during its time was the largest temple complex in Thebes, surpassing even the Karnak temple. As it was built too close to the floodplain, less than two hundred years later it already stood in ruins and most of its stones were reused by later pharaohs for their own building projects. The place where the statue was found is likely to have been the south gate of the mortuary temple complex, as it is as far from the temple as the Colossi of Memnon at the east gate.
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