Ptah-Sokar-Osiris Figure inscribed for Pestjauwymin

Ptah-Sokar-Osiris Figure inscribed for Pestjauwymin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This mummiform figure represents the funerary deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, who embodied the concept of rebirth. On the head is a shuty crown: two ostrich plumes; a sun disk; and ram's horns.The inscription down the center of the body introduces a prayer to be spoken by Osiris for the benefit of a woman named Pestjauwymin, daughter of a Stolist (the priest who adorned a divine image). Flanking the upper part of the text are figures of the canopic deities, who embodied and protected the internal organs. The figure sits on a square pedestal. Underneath this is a tenon that would have held the statue to a longer rectangular base (see 86.1.88a–d). A cavity in the now-missing base might have held a piece of papyrus or a "corn-mummy," a small bundle of mud and vegetal matter connected with agricultural fertility and the resurrection of the dead. This type of funerary statuette was an important element of the burial assemblage in the Late and Ptolemaic Periods.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ptah-Sokar-Osiris Figure inscribed for PestjauwyminPtah-Sokar-Osiris Figure inscribed for PestjauwyminPtah-Sokar-Osiris Figure inscribed for PestjauwyminPtah-Sokar-Osiris Figure inscribed for PestjauwyminPtah-Sokar-Osiris Figure inscribed for Pestjauwymin

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.