This statuette of a hippo was molded in faience, a crushed quartz glazed and fired at a relatively low temperature. Copper salts in the glaze impart the bright blue or blue-green color so characteristic of faience objects. Over the animal’s naturalistic shape, the craftsman painted lily plants that appear as a giant tattoo. Small sculptures...
Statuettes depicting hippopotami, symbolic of regeneration in the hereafter, were popular grave goods that were placed close to the mummy in the coffin. Plants and animals characteristic of the marshes where the hippo lived are depicted on its body. The king’s ritual hippopotamus hunt symbolized his victory over the forces of chaos with which the...
The goddess Taweret is depicted with pendulous breasts and swollen belly, which recalls the image of a pregnant woman. The goddess usually wears a female wig that can be topped with a feathered headdress, a modius (a cylinder-shaped headdress with a flat end), or with horns and a sun disc. Another recurring element is the...
Three ritual funerary couches were found in the antechamber of Tutankhamun. They are made of stuccoed gilded wood in the form of sacred animals whose eyes are inlaid with colored glass paste. These beds may have been intended to bear the deceased king during his journey to his eternal destination in the afterlife. One bed...
This benevolent-looking hippopotamus figurine slips into the marshes, taking on their color and half-engulfed in water plants. Bright-blue Egyptian faience figures of hippopotami such as this were placed in the tombs of high-ranking civil servants toward the end of the Middle Kingdom. The hippopotamus was associated with the fertility of the Nile mud or silt....
This faience hippo statuette was found in Dra’ Abu el-Naga’ in western Thebes. The glossy blue glaze is the color of the Nile, where the animal lived, and the decoration shows various representations of fauna and flora that grew by the river. The flowers, papyrus plants, and perching birds are depicted in black, linear forms....
