Plaque of a Queen or Goddess (perhaps Cleopatra IV)
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 Egyptian Caption: Egyptian. Plaque of a Queen or Goddess (perhaps Cleopatra IV), 305–30 B.C.E.. Gold-plated repousse silver, 15 3/4 × 9 × 1 in. (40 × 22.9 × 2.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 44.120. (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.
Bronze relief depicting a standing figure of a woman.
The artifact is a bronze relief showing a woman in profile facing left. The figure is dressed in a detailed, patterned garment and has elaborate hair styling typical of ancient Egyptian depictions. The style is indicative of artistic conventions used in representing human figures, with attention to bodily proportions and ornamental details.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 44.120 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3464 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.