While visiting my local museum's Egypt exhibit, I noticed that a few of the statues had broken noses. While it's an admittedly small sample size, it seemed like noses were broken more than other protrusions. Are there any recordings of international nose breaking and the motives behind them?
Two answers.
One, the unintentional is that noses protrude and are decently thin, so if a statue falls or is knocked into something, a nose is more likely to break off than a flat surface. This is also why many statues are missing hands, fingers, penises, and sometimes arms.
Intentionally speaking, chiseling off a nose here and there was a form of vandalism, and mostly, politically or religiously fueled vandalism. From Ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt where this is commonly found.
The Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, in the 15th century, attributes the loss of the nose to by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In AD 1378, when the local peasants were making offerings and praying to the Sphinx for a good harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was furious and accused them of idolatry and destroyed the nose ... and was hanged for vandalism.
There have also been stories, but no specifics I can find about Muslims , Christians and Jews chiseling off some noses because the statues represented idolatry of the polytheistic religions of the ancient world. But most of what's out there indicates dates earlier to 1800s for the nose-bashing.