Weight in the Form of a Human Foot and Leg
Description
Object Label: Many deities in the official Egyptian pantheon can be recognized by their headdresses. The Double Crown of the beneficent goddess Mut, whose name means “mother,” characterizes her as a conveyor of kingship and the divine mother of pharaoh. Amun, whose name means “hidden,” is portrayed as a man wearing a tall, plumed crown. When he appears with a solar disk at the base of the crown, he is known as Amun-Re, who possesses both hidden and solar creative powers. When shown in tightly enveloping garb and with an erection, he may be called Amun-Re-Kamutef, associated with fertility and regeneration. An amulet in this virile attitude would have held the promise of eternal rebirth after death. Monthly rebirth is also invoked by the full and crescent moons of Khonsu, the divine heir of Amun and Mut. In popular religion the protection of pregnancy and birth was entrusted to such deities as Taweret and Bes. The appearance of Taweret, “The Great One,” as a pregnant hippopotamus with lion and crocodile features is a dramatic symbol of protective motherhood. The dwarf with a lion’s face and legs likely represents Bes, who was worshipped in the home as a protector of motherhood, birth, and rebirth. Catalogue description: Culture Possibly Egypto-Roman Caption: Possibly Egypto-Roman. Weight in the Form of a Human Foot and Leg, 27 B.C.E. – 284 C.E.. Bronze, 2 1/2 x 1 11/16 in., 0.3 lb. (6.4 x 4.3 cm, 121.35 g). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 16.246. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
Bronze small object shaped like a human foot and lower leg, with a raised rounded head/ankle-like element and an opening in the upper part suggestive of a suspension or attachment hole.
The image shows a dark patinated bronze figurative weight/object modeled as a human foot and lower leg. The foot faces left with distinct toes and the heel forming a continuous base. Above the foot, the leg tapers upward into a rounded end resembling an ankle-to-shin form; centered near the top is a circular drilled/opening or perforation. The surface is uniformly metallic with wear and corrosion/patina; no painted details are visible. There are no clearly legible hieroglyphs or inscriptions, and no visible Greek/Coptic/Arabic text. No royal cartouches are present. No explicit identifiable deities are shown beyond the generic human-foot form; iconographic identification is not explicit in the image.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.246 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3165 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.