Why Are Statues Missing Their Noses?

The nose projects furthest from the face, but the pattern of missing noses is too targeted to be only weather and accidents.

In ancient Egypt, statues were functional bodies for spirits and gods. If a statue received offerings, it needed to function symbolically as a body.

A body breathes through its nose. Remove the nose, and the statue cannot breathe. The damage neutralized the image without destroying the whole object.

In ancient Egypt, destroying a statue's nose was not vandalism. It was murder - just of a different kind.

Not every missing nose was deliberate. The nose is the most exposed feature. When statues fall or erode, the nose often breaks first.

Ancient sculptors knew this. Some noses were carved separately and attached with pins, meaning some statues were already on replacement noses before they lost those too.

Some of these statues were already on their second nose before they lost that one too.

Christian and Islamic iconoclasm targeted images considered idolatrous. Defacing the face was a fast way to deface the deity or ruler.

Napoleon is often blamed for the Sphinx's missing nose, but drawings before his campaign already show it gone.

Napoleon has been blamed for the Sphinx's nose for two centuries. He had nothing to do with it.

Human beings are extremely sensitive to faces. Destroying the face changes the object more powerfully than almost any other damage.

The nose is the face's center of gravity. Break it and the face stops cohering into a person.

Missing noses tell stories about who controls public memory and whose face deserves to survive.

Museum visitors often walk through galleries full of political violence without recognizing it.