A lion headed goddess, possibly Wadjet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lion-headed goddesses in Egypt encompassed numerous deities including Sakhmet, Wadjet, and Bastet, among others. In this guise, the goddesses were fierce protective deities, but ones that could also bring about destruction on behalf of the gods, both through violence and through plague and pestilence. This figure utilizes several iconographic elements common to many lion-headed goddesses including the upright standing posture, the lion’s mane combined with a tripartite wig, the long gown, and the sun disk. The sun disk, when worn by a lion-headed goddess, is sometimes linked with Wadjet, and alludes to her role as the daughter and eye of the sun god Re, but many goddesses shared this aspect and similar inscribed statuettes name several different deities; without an inscription or context, it is difficult to assign a precise identity to this figure. Several features of this particular goddess draw the gaze: her wide circular eyes and the hatching at the bottom of her ears; her collar and bracelets; the detailing at the top of her dress, with lines between and below the breasts, framing their contours; and the subtle but sensuous rendering of her waist, hips and thighs.

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