Cowroid with Outward-facing Merged Lions and Sun Disk

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is a cowroid, a seal-amulet imitating the cowrie shell. As early as prehistoric times, cowrie shells were worn as adornment and amulets in Egypt, and their imitations in stone or faience appear in the early 2nd millennium B.C. They are often associated with fertility because the ventral opening of the shell looks similar to female genitalia. This cowroid’s underside shows a pair of merged lions, a design rarely found on seal-amulets. A sun disk sits above. The pair of lions may refer to the twin gods Shu and Tefnut, respectively gods of the air and the rain according to the creation myth of Heliopolis: Shu and his sister Tefnut can take the shape of lions placed back-to-back, supporting the sun disk. This pair of lions, however, are merged at the shoulders, as seen in Ptolemaic inscriptions where they refer to the lunar god Khonsu.

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