Berlin Green Head

The Berlin Green Head is an ancient Egyptian statue head (AeMP 12500) made from greenschist and housed in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, one floor down from the Nefertiti Bust in room 1.09.

[2] The face of the statue is calm and emotionless and, unusually for contemporary works of art, also perfectly symmetric, and it is that of an intelligent-looking, middle-aged man with many well-rendered wrinkles and lines.

The statue's shaved, oval-shaped skull is so realistic that it was once believed that the sculptor could not have made it without ancient Greek knowledge of anatomy, a claim subsequently disproved by the analysis of similar, earlier Egyptian artworks.

In 1960, Bernard von Bothmer further reduced the time range between 100 and 50 BCE, arguing that the head reveals a maturity not compatible with the earlier Ptolemaic art, as well as a similarity with some upcoming Roman Republic-era Egyptian works.

Its provenance is also unknown, as well as its trace before 1895, when it was acquired from the collections of prince Ibrahim Hilmy and Henry Wallis.