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-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.
A steatite Egyptian cippus-like stela shows a standing bearded male deity with arms extended, framed by crocodile imagery and flanked by vertical ritual figures or standards; the lower register contains additional animals and dense hieroglyphic text.
The object is a dark greenish-black stone plaque in the form of a cippus. At the center stands a human-like, bearded god (profile/face forward) wearing a patterned garment and a broad collar; both hands are raised outward holding long, staff-like or ceremonial elements. Behind and around the central figure are multiple vertical columns of hieroglyphs and schematic figures/standards in relief. The bottom register is bordered and contains repeated motifs resembling crocodiles or crocodile heads/backs aligned across the base, with more hieroglyphic signs directly above and below. The top portion includes a face-like element or headdress detail above the central deity and additional hieroglyphic signs. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic is legible in the provided image; only Egyptian hieroglyphs appear. The overall style and iconography are broadly consistent with Ptolemaic-period Egyptian religious reliefs, though specific epithets in the text are not fully readable at this resolution.
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.