Hathor Head Amulet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The goddess face on this small piece is less angular than those seen on many sistra: although broad through the cheeks, the brow and chin are rounded, and her features are less drawn out and stylized. The goddess wears a vulture cap whose pattern of small feathers can be seen above and at the sides of her head over her typical wig, creating a busy pattern equally atypical of many Saite sistra. The busy detail and more normalized features suggest a different place or date of production than the sistra: the piece may be closer in date to the Ptolemaic Period. Over her head appears the podium crown. On either side is a uraeus cobra, the marker of the goddess’s very close relation to the king-like gods Horus and Re – and related to the goddess’s own sky and sun aspects – and to the king. The cobra on the left wears the white crown and the one on the right the red crown. The elaborate markings on the cobra hood are visible in side view. The back is flat. Four vertical piercings indicate this element is a spacer.

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