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...
The dignitary is shown in this statuette offering an altar with the head of a ram, the sacred animal of Amun-Re, the main god of Thebes and the New Kingdom. Steatite is a soft, easy to carve stone, which hardens and turns black when baked in a closed kiln. The man wears the so called...
This wooden statuette of a woman depicting her wears a wig with a wreath of leaves and a lotus flower on her forehead. In her left hand she holds a sistrum (a rattle used in the cult of female deities), whose handle only is preserved. The right arm, which was carved separately and attached with...
These three schist triads of Menkaure were found by the Egyptologist George Reisner in the valley temple of Menkaure near his pyramid in Giza. The triads was discovered in 1908 in the valley temple of Menkaure in its own hierarchical group, and 5 were found and it is believed that they were eight as there...
Painted limestone standing statue of Satmeret, Wife of Neferherenptah, called Fifi. He was a purification priest and prophet of the mortuary cults of the kings Khafre and Menkaure. Neferherenptah was thus of considerable influence in Giza, where he was buried in his own Mastaba. His tomb contained statues, rather simple in character of himself, of...
The Gayer-Anderson cat is a bronze figure depicting one form of the goddess Bastet. The goddess was usually shown as a cat-headed woman, or in the form of a cat. Her principal cult center was Bubastis in the Nile Delta. Bastet was a mother goddess and benign counterpart to the more aggressive lion goddess Sekhmet. The...
Granite is extremely hard, but the sculptor of this statue was able to give the king’s plump face and small features a softly natural quality, perhaps suggesting the subject’s actual appearance rather than an idealized version. Originally, this fragment surmounted an oversize figure, achieving the same monumental quality as the pyramids being built at this...
This statue of Khasekhemwy last king of the 2nd Dynasty of Egypt, enthroned with conquered foes incised around the base, it is the oldest surviving stone royal sculpture from ancient Egypt. The king is wearing the White Hedjet Crown of Upper Egypt and is wrapped in a long robe with long sleeves associated with the...
This bust of Ramesses II closely resembles a statue of Ramesses in the Egyptian Museum of Turin. However, the Cairo piece wears a long wig, rather than the Blue Khepresh Crown worn by the Turin statue (Cat. 1380). A uraeus can be seen at the king’s forehead, and he is shown with a young face,...
This statue represents the god Thoth in the form of a sitting ibis. The artist’s careful choice of materials, the bronze of the head and the white limestone of the body, give the statue the appearance of a real bird. The feathers of the body are in light relief while the tail, which is separate...
