| Statue of the Nile God | |
| Other Language 1: | Italian |
| Other Title 1: | Italian: Statua del dio Nilo |
| Wikidata: | Q3968659 |
| Artist: | unknown |
| Completion Date: | 2nd–3rd century |
| Medium: | marble |
| Movement: | Hellenistic art |
| City: | Naples |
| Coordinates: | 40.8488°N 14.2561°W |
The Statue of the Nile God (it|Statua del dio Nilo) is an Ancient Roman marble statue dating from the 2nd century AD.
It is located at Piazzetta Nilo, at the start of via Nilo, in the quarter of the same name, and it is this statue that gives all their name. The church of Santa Maria Assunta dei Pignatelli faces the statue, and the Palazzo del Panormita is on the north flank. Two blocks east, along Via Benedetto Croce (part of the Decumano Inferiore commonly called Spaccanapoli) rises the church of San Domenico Maggiore.
The statue represents the God of the Nile, recumbent with a cornucopia and lying on a sphinx. The statue was probably erected in the then Roman port city by Alexandrian merchants in the 2nd century. It was recovered, headless, in 1476, and was nicknamed . The interpretation for the nickname is that the headless statue was thought to be a female representation of the city breastfeeding its children – hence the ('body of naples').
It was placed upon a pedestal in 1657, and later that century a bearded head was sculpted.[1] The sculptor of the head was Bartolomeo Mori.[2] Later restoration was performed in the 18th-century by Angelo Viva.
In recent times, the statue was restored twice: First in 1993, and than in 2013 after the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage had recovered the head of the sphinx in Austria, which had disappeared in the 1950s. On 15 November 2014, a public ceremony for the completion of the restoration was held.
A higher quality version of the same topic, also Ancient Roman, is found in the Vatican Museums.[3] Both statues are copies of an original from Alexandria, Egypt.
The inscription under the statue reads:
The earlier 1667 inscription of this statue – referenced in the current inscription – is recorded in travel writings of Johann Georg Keyßler (mid 18th-century) still noting a crocodile, which is absent today: