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Statuette of Isis and Harpocrates

Late Period, 26th Dynasty, 664 – 525 BC
Solid cast bronze.
H 17 cm without tang beneath the feet

The enthroned figure of the goddess Isis holds Harpocrates on her lap with her left hand. She is represented characteristically as a mother presenting her breast to suckle her son.

Isis wears a long close-fitting garment and an incised collar. Her feet rest on a base. Over her tripartite wig she wears a vulture headdress decorated with a cobra rather than the usual vulture head at her forehead and the typical head adornment, a cow's horns and a sun disc supported by a modius of cobras. Her eyes are gilded and the pupils are blackened with niello.

The naked Harpocrates has a braided sidelock denoting his youth and a uraeus over the forehead. His arms follow the line of the body, the open palms point downwards.

Incised details for wig, vulture headdress, collar and sidelock; upper part of right horn of the repaired.

cf.

S. Schoske, D. Wildung, Katalog der Sonderausstellung: Gott und Götter im alten Ägypten, Mainz 1992, Nr. 83

The British Museum no. EA60756

  

Provenance

German private collection G. (1888-1974) and E. (1901-1990) W., acquired prior to the 1960s.

Price
on request
Item
7323