Why Does This Newly Discovered 2,000-Year-Old Stone Slab Depict a Roman Emperor as an Egyptian Pharaoh?

The sandstone monument shows Tiberius standing next to a family of local gods. Archaeologists say the scene illustrates the ruler’s role as a leader who upheld cosmic order in Egyptian society

Meilan Solly | Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

April 15, 2026

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Restoration work at Karnak, an ancient temple complex near Luxor, Egypt, has revealed a sandstone monument featuring an intriguing image of the Roman emperor Tiberius, who ruled between 14 and 37 C.E.

Measuring nearly two feet tall, the upright slab, known as a stela, shows Tiberius standing next to a trio of Egyptian gods: Amun, Khonsu and Mut. As Abdelghaffar Wagdy, co-director of the Franco-Egyptian Center for the Study of the Temples of Karnak, tells Live Science’s Margherita Bassi, the scene was likely intended to depict the emperor upholding maat, or cosmic order, by engaging with local deities.

“To fulfill this role, the ruler needed to be shown performing traditional rituals in a form that the gods would recognize—namely, as a pharaoh,” Wagdy says. Fittingly, Tiberius is shown wearing the double crown donned by ancient Egypt’s rulers, with its two halves representing the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.

The joint French and Egyptian research team found the stela while restoring the gateway of an enclosure wall dated to the reign of Ramses III, who ruled in the 12th century B.C.E. during Egypt’s 20th Dynasty. Archaeologists dismantled the structure entirely, then reassembled it atop modern foundations. They discovered that some of the decorated blocks used to build the gateway were far older than the others, dating to the reign of the 18th-Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III, some 200 years prior. As Nevine El-Aref writes for Ahram Online, the find suggests “the presence of an earlier gateway at the site” whose blocks were later reused.

According to a statement from Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, experts uncovered the stela in a layer of earth associated with mud-brick structures from the late Roman and Byzantine periods. Below the carved images of Tiberius and the triad of three gods, five lines of hieroglyphs record the restoration of an enclosure wall in a temple dedicated to Amun, protector of the pharaohs and the patron deity of Thebes.

This isn’t the first time that archaeologists have unearthed artistic portrayals of Roman emperors as Egyptian pharaohs. In 2014, experts announced that they’d discovered a carving of Claudius wearing a crown adorned with ram horns and three falcons. Hieroglyphs identified the emperor as the “Son of Ra, Lord of the Crowns,” as well as the king of Upper and Lower Egypt. Additionally, the Louvre houses a bust of a different Roman ruler, perhaps Nero, donning a striped linen headdress known as a nemes. Other examples in Egyptian art include a relief of Trajan offering a sacrifice to the goddess Hathor and a depiction of Augustus, Tiberius’ predecessor and adoptive father, at the Kalabsha Temple near Aswan.

Per the Global Egyptian Museum, a digital database of Egyptian artifacts held by cultural institutions around the world, Roman emperors were “considered to be pharaohs; they were depicted on temple walls and wrote their names in hieroglyphs in a cartouche,” or oval frame. At the same time, however, rulers like Tiberius took a largely hands-off approach to governing Egypt, which came under Roman control following the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C.E. Roman emperors appointed prefects to oversee Egypt in their stead, rarely visiting the province in person.

The newly discovered slab “reflects a standard ideological and administrative system, in which emperors were presented as pious builders and protectors of temples, regardless of their actual level of involvement,” Wagdy tells Live Science. “The monument expresses what a king should be in Egyptian terms rather than documenting his personal achievements.”

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Meilan Solly is a senior associate digital editor at Smithsonian magazine, where she oversees the online history section. Solly's specialties are Tudor England, medieval Europe and World War II.