Falcon figurine from a coffin or box

Falcon figurine from a coffin or box

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In addition to its association with sky gods such as Re, the falcon was a symbol of the funerary god Sokar, an ancient deity originally linked to the site of the great pyramids and later merged with Osiris. During the Sokar festival, the mummified god was imagined to be reborn as the solar falcon. Figures of Sokar as a mummified bird such as this one are often found surmounting coffins or funerary boxes from the later periods of Egyptian history.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Falcon figurine from a coffin or boxFalcon figurine from a coffin or boxFalcon figurine from a coffin or boxFalcon figurine from a coffin or boxFalcon figurine from a coffin or box

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.