IFAO

The identity of the character depicted in the Coptos colossi and their chronology have become two controversial points in the study of these works of art. Soon after they were discovered, the idea that they could be a primitive representation of the god Min was proposed. Their location within the perimeter of the temple of Coptos, as well as the presence of certain iconographic motifs, led a priori to that conclusion. Nevertheless, some later works have opposed that hypothesis. Whether these statues belong to the Egyptian artistic environment or not has been the starting point of the formal and comparative study developed in the first part of this paper. Within the iconographic field we have, in the second part of this study, evaluated every one of the motifs inscribed on the statues. Through the results provided by the evidence, we have concluded that the Coptos colossi were early representations of the god Min. Early because they belong to a chronological period situated between the end of Naqada II and the beginning of Naqada III. The differences in content with historical images of the god Min arise from representing an entity that ruled over the desert and the sea; a different Min, pertaining to the so-called "Preformal tradition", that we consider a former sculptural symbol of the same principle, namely Fertility.