Hilary Wilson on… The sidelock of youth
Egyptian artists worked within a canon of representation that stylised, idealised, and emphasised particular traits of the human form. This is apparent in the composition of Old Kingdom statue groups, where a wife is shown on a smaller scale than her husband, and their children smaller still. Where colour remains, male figures appear deeply tanned with red-brown skin, while females have lighter complexions of a pinkish or yellowish tone. Their clothing is shown as pristine, and their coiffures are perfect in every curl or braid. Prepubescent sons and daughters appear as miniature adults, but identified as children by their nakedness, by the finger raised to their lips, and by their lack of hair. The classic childish hairstyle was a closely cropped or shaved head, apart from a single plait hanging from the scalp behind the right ear. The bound end of this braid is shown curled and was probably set with some kind of applied wax or animal fat, possibly mixed with clay, as is the custom with the Himba people of Namibia.
This ‘sidelock of youth’, more commonly worn by boys, seems to have been abandoned at the onset of puberty, perhaps cut off as symbolic of the transition to adulthood. Family groups on tomb stelae are frequently represented with the children all equal in height, and relative ages are implied by the order in which the children stand before their parents, and the nuances of their clothing and hairstyle. However, even when a son holds тιтles indicating his professional role, he may still be depicted, in his father’s tomb, naked with the sidelock, emphasising his subordinate status in relation to his parent.
Hairstyles for both men and women changed over time, as did the form of the youthful sidelock. In the New Kingdom, the curled plait was replaced by flowing tresses or a collection of braids, gathered in a decorative clasp on one side of the head, as worn by Nebamun’s daughter in the fowling scene. The daughters of Bakenamun, Queen Tiy’s cook, wear their hair in multiple plaits, while their brother sports the traditional sidelock, which appears to be worn on the left side of the head because of the left-orientation of the figures.
Horus the Child
The most significant wearer of the sidelock of youth was Horus, the heir and avenger of Osiris, and the very model of a dutiful son. The Child Horus was known as Harpakhred, a name Hellenised to Harpocrates, and was usually represented in the traditional pose of a child, naked with the forefinger of his right hand pressed to his mouth. As the successor of Osiris to the throne of Egypt, he wears the Double Crown augmented by the sidelock of youth. Another form of Horus was Iunmutef, ‘Supporter of his Mother’, the young adult who took on the role of his mother’s protector after Isis had kept him safe during his infancy. From the First Intermediate Period, Horus Iunmutef became the model for the eldest son who officiated at his father’s obsequies, especially the performance of the ‘Opening of the Mouth’. The Iunmutef priest, wearing the leopard-skin robe and a short wig with the distinctive plaited sidelock, appears on many royal monuments of the New Kingdom, such as the base of Ramesses II’s seated statue at Luxor, and in the tomb of Queen Nefertari. In this context, Iunmutef is closely ᴀssociated with the cult of kingship and the sem-priest, who presided over significant royal rituals such as the heb-sed or jubilee, wears the sidelock as symbolic of his link with Horus.
Sidelock of royalty
From the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty, princes and princesses adopted a version of the sidelock as a form of royal idenтιтy, and wore it well into their adult life. The figure of Hatshepsut’s daughter, Neferura, was included in statues of Senenmut, her tutor or guardian. In Senenmut’s block statue in Berlin, all that can be seen of the princess is her head, adorned with the sidelock of youth, and the finger in front of her lips.
Images and sculpture from Amarna show that the daughters of Akhenaten and Neferтιтi had shaved heads, apart from a long, unbraided sidelock, or wore a similar flowing lock over a short bob hairstyle.
As seen in Peter Brand’s article in AE 139, the young Prince Ramesses was depicted wearing the classic plaited sidelock marking him as his father’s heir and co-regent. In (Pharaoh) Ramesses II’s battle reliefs, his sons, fighting alongside their father, are distinguished by this princely hairstyle, as illustrated in the British Museum reproduction of scenes from the Beit el-Wali temple.
At all Ramesses II’s major temples, such as Abu Simbel and the Ramesseum, his daughters wear a feminine equivalent of their brothers’ hairstyle. The same is true for the royal children of Ramesses III, for example at Medinet Habu, and in the Twentieth Dynasty tombs in the Valley of the Queens
Sidelocks of the gods
Some deities wore the sidelock to indicate their position as the junior member of a cult triad, such as Ihy the sistrum player, son of Hathor at Dendera. Tutankhamun was depicted with the sidelock and lunar crown in the guise of Khonsu, the loyal son of his divine father Amun-Ra.
Nefertum, child of Ptah at Memphis, was protector of the sacred blue lotus from which the sun-god emerged at the dawn of creation and, like the infant Ra himself, was shown with a sidelock.
An ancient youthful deity who gained popularity during the New Kingdom was Shed, ‘the Enchanter’. His connection with magic and power over the forces of Isfet led to his being ᴀssociated with and, by the Late Period, completely replaced by Horus, who was said to have inherited healing powers from his mother Isis, the ‘Mistress of Magic’. It is the Shed form of Horus who appears on the cippus stela as a sidelocked youth, standing on crocodiles and holding other harmful creatures, such as scorpions, snakes, and lions, and surrounded by invocations to the god to relieve the effects of illness, bites, and stings. No wonder amulets in the shape of the sidelock itself were worn as protection against such evils.
