Nile God Statue

You’re now standing before the Statue of the Nile God, a Roman-era masterpiece created between the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Legend has it that it was erected by an Egyptian community from Alexandria that settled in Naples, honoring the Nile River as a god of fertility, wealth, and abundance. The statue serves as an allegory of nature’s power to give life; after all, the Nile’s waters turned desert into fertile land, sustaining its people. Over the centuries, this statue has seen plenty of changes. In the 15th century, for example, its head went missing and the cherubs around it disappeared, and it was mistaken for a female symbol of the nurturing city. Then, in 1657, artist Bartolomeo Mori added a new male head, placed a crocodile’s head at the god’s feet and a sphinx under his left arm. During the 1950s, several parts were stolen, but in 2013 the sphinx’s head was found in Austria and returned to Naples in an effort to protect the city’s heritage. The statue was restored the following year, and by 2015 Naples had reclaimed this magnificent ancient statue in its entirety.