Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · statue

Representation of a Queen or Goddess

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Although both queens and goddesses were often represented in the Ptolemaic Period with elaborate headdresses consisting of a vulture surmounted by cow's horns and a sun disk, the smaller of these two females is clearly labeled as the goddess Isis by a hieroglyph above the orb of the sun. The identity of the woman on the larger fragment is uncertain. Both works feature the style characteristic of Ptolemaic art: fleshy cheeks and especially the bullet-shaped breast and luxuriant belly and thighs on the smaller piece. Although the latter work may have been a sculptor's trial piece, as suggested by the grid pattern on the rectangle at the upper right, the hole at the top indicates that it may have been reused as a temple offering. Caption: Representation of a Queen or Goddess, 305–30 B.C.E.. Sandstone, pigment, 7 5/8 x 7 3/8 x 4 5/16 in. (19.3 x 18.8 x 10.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.1488E. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

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.

A carved stone relief depicting the profile of a person with elaborate hair or headdress.

The artifact is a carved limestone relief featuring a side profile of a person with detailed features. The hair or headdress includes intricate patterns, possibly signifying high status or royalty. The style of carving is indicative of Egyptian artistic conventions, with a focus on profile representation and ornamental detailing around the head.

royal Ptolemaic good
Materials limestone

Connections

Deities Isis
Materials LimestoneStone

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.1488E tier-2
  • BKM-Object 4160 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.