Through the verification of key archival records, the use of newspaper notices, and diary chronicles, as well as visual sources and the cross-checking of names, the real provenance of Udjahorresnet’s Naoforo Vaticano at the moment of its entry into the Vatican Museums in the late 18th century can be clarified. The belief that the statue came from Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli at the moment of its acquisition by the Gregorian Egyptian Museum can be definitively rejected. Its arrival in Rome is linked to a series of events that involved international figures including the Belgian Count Heinrich Leonard Pasch von Krienen, the archducal doctor Carlo De Assulle, the Irish art dealer Joseph Denham, the papal Commissioner for Antiquities Giovanni Battista Visconti and the restorer Nicola Valentini. Additionally, issues regarding the gender of the figure represented, as well as the statue’s function and restoration before its numerous hieroglyphs were translated shed light on the way antiquities were handled in the late 18th century.
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