Monkey or meerkat

Monkey or meerkat

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Depictions of monkeys are popular throughout Egyptian history. Standing monkeys balancing on their tails seem to date to the Late Period and later. A faience example was excavated at Naurkatis in a cache dating to the late 5th-4th centuries BC. The Metropolitan Museum Egyptian Expedition excavated in a Ptolemaic tomb at Thebes a wooden example posed like this one, but carrying a bow and arrow and housed in a small sort of shrine/box. Eroded as this statuette is, it is clear that the penis was prominently depicted. A loop through the back is partly broken.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Monkey or meerkatMonkey or meerkatMonkey or meerkatMonkey or meerkatMonkey or meerkat

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.