Queen Tiye as Taweret
Rounded of belly, crocodile-tailed and lion-pawed, the goddess Taweret guarded childbirth and the nursery. Here her form is endowed with the features of Queen Tiye, great royal wife of Amenhotep III, weaving queenly authority into the most intimate sphere of protection. Such statuettes, small enough for chamber or chapel, were charms of presence, depicting the queen as the hippo-goddess, standing sentinel over mother and child, and by extension over the rebirth of kingship itself.
Carved in warm hardwood, the figure marries courtly portraiture with apotropaic power. Tiye’s royal markers (wig and uraeus) crown Taweret’s nourishing form, making a single image speak of fertility, safe delivery, and dynastic continuity. In an age when the well-being of the royal nursery was a matter of state, this little guardian is both household deity and political talisman; a smile from the nursery that steadies a kingdom.
Queen Tiye’s Role in a Time of Fertility and Renewal
Amenhotep III’s reign (c. 1390–1352 B.C.) was a period of extraordinary artistic confidence and religious expansion. Tiye, his Great Royal Wife, was represented not merely as consort but as a semi-divine partner in the cosmic order, participating in his rejuvenation festivals and the theology of the solar kingship. Taweret; the kindly, pot-bellied hippopotamus goddess of childbirth and renewal, suited Tiye’s status as matriarch of the royal household, protector of the royal nursery and of dynastic continuity.
Depicting Tiye in Taweret’s form symbolically linked the queen with fertility, rebirth, and the preservation of kingship itself. The figure probably stood in a domestic or palace shrine, or was part of a private devotional ensemble honouring the queen as a living manifestation of divine protection. Its making would therefore most likely belong to the late Eighteenth Dynasty’s cult of royal divinity, in which Amenhotep III and Tiye were venerated almost as paired gods upon earth.
Amenhotep III & Queen Tiye depicted in their son Akhenaten’s reign
Although Tiye lived into her son’s reign and was treated with vast adoration and respect, her representations became politically neutral and solar rather than apotropaic. A sculpture portraying her as Taweret would have clashed with the Atenist iconography that suppressed older deities of birth and protection (although, archaeological evidence from Amarna reveals that beyond the official temples, ordinary people continued to pray to these familiar protectors. In domestic shrines and small household altars, images of Taweret, Bes, and Hathor endured, guarding women in childbirth and watching over families). Thus, the wooden figure almost certainly predates Akhenaten’s revolution and is certainly a product of Amenhotep III’s richly symbolic court, when queenly divinity could still blend human portraiture and mythic embodiment without theological restraint.
The Dual Nature of Taweret
Like many Egyptian deities, Taweret held two faces; one fierce, one tender, each essential to her divine purpose. As a hippopotamus goddess, she inherited the nature of the animal itself: the female hippo, devoted to her young yet ferocious when threatened. To the Egyptians, this paradox was not contradiction but balance; the unity of nurture and protection, the gentle mother who could turn instantly into a guardian of terrifying strength.
In her most benevolent aspect, Taweret was the protector of childbirth, watching over mothers, infants, and the domestic sphere. Her pendulous breasts and rounded belly symbolised fertility and the nourishment of new life. She was called “She Who Is Great,” the kindly presence in the home, invoked during labour and at night to ward off evil spirits.
Yet her kindness was inseparable from her vigilant ferocity. With the jaws of a hippopotamus, the claws of a lion, and the tail of a crocodile, she embodied Egypt’s three most dangerous beasts and was a warning to any malignant force that dared approach. Amulets and household figures of Taweret thus captured this dual strength: her toothy smile promised comfort to the faithful, and terror to the wicked.
In her, the Egyptians saw the perfect maternal protector as the one who loved fiercely, defended utterly, and in her wild strength expressed the very rhythm of life itself.
Provenance
Unfortunately, where this piece was discovered is currently unknown. “Old Fund” acquisitions in Turin (1824–1888) often came from 19th-century collectors and dealers who did not record findspots. However, with some reasoning based on stylistic, material, and thematic parallels, we can make an informed hypothesis.
The Museo Egizio’s “Old Fund” includes pieces collected before systematic archaeology; many obtained by Bernardino Drovetti, the French consul in Egypt, whose agents excavated and purchased antiquities across Thebes (Luxor), Saqqara, and Memphis in the early 19th century. Given this, the statuette of Queen Tiye as Taweret most plausibly originated from the Theban region, where many artefacts of the 18th Dynasty, including portraits of Tiye and devotional household figures, have been found.
The subject also supports a Theban or palace-associated provenance. Small wooden figures of protective deities such as Taweret and Bes are most commonly discovered in domestic or palace shrines (as at Malqata, Amenhotep III’s royal palace complex west of Thebes); or tomb assemblages belonging to high officials and members of the royal household, where they served as apotropaic guardians of rebirth.
The style and workmanship of this figure of Tiye as Taweret showcases a hardwood, finely carved, intimate scale figure, and the hybrid iconography linking Tiye with Taweret align closely with 18th-Dynasty Theban production, particularly pieces connected with the court of Amenhotep III.
Summary:
Wooden figure of Queen Tiye as Taweret
New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, reign of Amenhotep III, c. 1390–1352 B.C.
Likely from Thebes, but not certain. A part of Museo Egizio’s “Old Fund”. Cat. 566
