Head of a Hippopotamus

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This extraordinarily lifelike animal head was once part of a hippopotamus statue about three feet in length. Comparisons with other sculptures from the period indicate that it was created during the reign of Amenhotep III. The seated statues that the king dedicated to the goddess Sakhmet are well known; their feline heads display hollow sinewed cheeks and knobby facial bones similar to those on the hippo. This head may have come from Amenhotep's mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile opposite modern Luxor. This temple was mostly dismantled in ancient times, but the site is marked by two colossal statues of the king known as the colossi of Memnon. Excavators have found another, even larger, hippo statue, also of Egyptian alabaster, at the site. Together with hundreds of other sculptures—many of them representing deities in animal form—the hippos would have served in rituals procuring godlike status for the king. On the underside of the animal's jaw is an ancient drill hole. It may have been made for a metal support (the head is heavy) or for the insertion of the hook of a harpoon during a ritual hippopotamus hunt. Traces of red paint are preserved in furrows at the sides of the mouth.

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