Harpokrates in an Egyptianizing Crown and holding the club of Herakles

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Harpokrates, or "Horus the child," the son of Isis and Osiris/Serapis, is here represented as a chubby toddler with a plump, crooked forefinger reaching toward his small mouth. He holds the knobby club of the Greek god Herakles and on his head wears a vestigial Egyptian double crown detailed with striations and dots. The crown is obscured in the front by a very large sun disk bearing a uraeus. A natural but infequently noted deep blue corrosion gives the piece a rich tone. Harpokrates, the quintessential divine son, was extremely popular and had already been assimilated to other gods during pharaonic times. During the Hellenistic and Roman eras the syncretisms multiplied. The association of Harpokrates with Herakles in these eras seems to be based on warrior characteristics that Harpokrates had acquired in earlier conflations with other dieties. Once Roman rule came to Egypt the worship of Harpokrates spread throughout the empire, so it is likely that the unusual details of the god's crown and disk denote a non-Egyptian origin.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art