‘Reserve Heads’ a Puzzle for Egyptologists : Archeology: Bust portraits, perhaps of important personalities, were found in burial shafts. The purpose of them is still unknown.

The beautifully crafted limestone heads honor high officials of the Pharaohs’ courts. Egyptologists have given them a name, “reserve heads,” but have not learned their purpose.

No. 36 was found in December in an ancient cemetery south of the Sphinx.

The heads are precursors to the bust portraits of ancient Rome. They became popular as an art form, and vanished, in the 70 years it took for the three Giza pyramids to rise from the desert sands.

Almost all the heads were found in burial shafts or in tombs alongside the pyramids. They are divided among museums in Cairo, Boston and Berkeley, Calif.

That No. 36 was exactly where it shouldn’t have been, carelessly tossed into a burial ground for middle-class artisans and foremen, adds another twist to the puzzle.

It is 5 inches high, with a 3-inch neck and ears that measure 1 1/2 inches, and of particular interest to Egyptologists because the ears are intact. Only one other, in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, still has both ears.

“Usually, the left ear is missing or cut,” said Mansour Bauraik, an inspector for the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. “One theory is that the left ears were cut off to prevent the deceased from hearing bad things said by the gods. We don’t know.”

The heads have a hauntingly similar look, but the carving is so detailed they seem to be actual portraits. They bear no inscriptions, and few have been linked with certainty to a particular person.

Most are thought to represent important personalities in the courts of Pharaohs Cheops and Chephren, the father and son who built the two grandest Giza pyramids. Their reigns ended in 2494 BC.

Bauraik, who is in charge of excavating ancient Egypt’s first middle-class cemetery, said he has no doubt that reserve head 36 was mislaid.

“Obviously it wasn’t a part of any burials here,” he said.

Zahi Hawass, antiquities director of the pyramid area, believes the nature of the cemetery may explain the mystery.

“These people were artisans, craftsmen who decorated tombs and carved statues for the king,” he said. “Maybe one of them took the head home from the royal workshop and just forgot about it. Or it was a model the artist just threw away when he didn’t need it anymore.”

Reserve heads bear a strong resemblance to portraits on tomb walls at Giza. They have straight noses with delicately worked eyes and mouths. The short hair is cropped close at the neck, resembling a skullcap.

The figures are cut off at the base of the neck, allowing them to stand unaided; they may have stood atop the sarcophagus.

Some Egyptologists argue that the heads were simply models for grander statues. This theory holds that ears often fell off because of rough handling by grave-robbers or because they were weaker than the facial area.

Others, such as Hawass, hold that reserve heads were just that, kept in reserve in case the natural head decayed over the centuries. By that reasoning, the heads would have had major religious significance for officials seeking eternal life.

Hawass believes they were carved as a way to bypass Cheops’ dictum that only gods, and Pharaohs who appointed themselves as the sun god Re, qualified for statues.

He believes that reserve heads became substitutes for statues, a way for the soul to recognize the deceased even if his own head didn’t survive in the early days of mummification.

“When the soul came out to receive offerings in the tomb,” he said, “it could find the right body.”