Cippus of Horus on the Crocodiles
Description
Object Label: In Egyptian mythology, the goddess Isis raised Horus by hiding him in the marshes from his enemy, Seth. Cippi, or magical stelae, represent Horus’s healing from scorpion stings and snakebites in the marshes. Egyptians believed that a liquid poured over a magical stela could absorb and transfer the power of the stela’s spells and images to the worshipper. Traditional Egyptian magic and religion such as this thrived throughout the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. despite the largely non-Egyptian origin of the country’s rulers at that time. Caption: Cippus of Horus on the Crocodiles, 3rd century B.C.E.. Steatite, 9 1/8 x 5 5/16 x 2 3/16 in. (23.2 x 13.5 x 5.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 60.73. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum (Gavin Ashworth, photographer))
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
An ancient Egyptian stele densely covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions.
The artifact is a tall, black stele inscribed with numerous vertical columns of hieroglyphs. The top section features a border with larger hieroglyphs and figures, which might represent deities or important individuals. The style is typical of Egyptian funerary steles with detailed and compact script.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 60.73 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3684 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.