| Abstract: |
This article wishes to argue that the so-called portrait statues or death images in East Javanese art might more appropriately be called deification images. The fact that such statues occur in couples (male and female) who show the same facial features, indicates that they were not intended to display individual features and cannot therefore be called portrait statues. Their half-closed eyes refer to meditation rather than death, which corroborates with the one aspect which all these images have in common, that of meditation of the highest god, which brings about unification with this god. It is argues that the meditative aspect of these images explains most significantly the king's unification with the highest god after death.
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