Across civilizations, few ancient statues survive the passage of time unscathed. Some sculptures lose their arms and others their head, yet a surprising number are missing just a nose. While this defacement is sometimes due to accidental damage, it’s more often the result of natural processes or deliberate destruction.
Why would people deliberately remove statues’ noses?
In many ancient cultures, statues weren’t just art—they held spiritual or symbolic power. So throughout human history, iconoclasm (“icon smashing”), the deliberate destruction of important figures or icons, was a method to undermine authority or invalidate power.
Ancient Egyptians, for instance, believed statues of deities could house portions of the deities’ essence, just as imagery of a deceased figure (like a pharaoh) could hold a part of their soul. People believed that damaging a specific part of a statue’s body prevented it from doing its job: hammering the ears off a god’s likeness prevented it from hearing prayers while breaking off a statue’s arm prevented it from making or receiving offerings.
And given that life force—breath—comes in through the nose, removing a statue-spirit’s nose prevents it from breathing, effectively “killing” it.
People destroyed statues usually due to political or religious motivations, but also as a form of self-protection. Looters and vandals of Egyptian tombs, for example, would sometimes remove a statue’s nose to prevent the deceased person from taking revenge.
Additionally, nose mutilation was a common form of punishment in the ancient world, from Greece to the Persian Empire to the Byzantian period. Destroying a likeness’s nose could have been a way to spiritually punish the actual person or deity.
How do statues lose their noses naturally?
Statues can lose their noses or other body parts because of weathering. This process is the slow breakdown or dissolution of rocks and minerals, such as the limestone often used in ancient Egyptian statues and structures and the terracotta favored by early Chinese Qin Dynasty sculptors.
When exposed to the elements over long periods of time, these materials slowly deteriorate. Weathering can be mechanical in nature—such as from the repeated expansion and contraction of rock due to exposure to heat and cold, respectively—or it can be caused by chemical or biological processes. Common agents of weathering include water, ice, acids, salts, plants, animals and changes in temperature.
