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

Pawerem, Priest of Bastet

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

Description

Object Label: Each morning in the temple, the pharaoh, or a priest playing the role of pharaoh, cared for the image of a god in order to protect it from the forces of chaos and assist the god’s daily rebirth. Temple Statue of Pawerem holds a shrine containing an image of the goddess Bastet, while Kneeling Statue of a Man holds a seated figure of Osiris, the god of the dead. Such statues (called naophoros, or “shrine-bearing”) link their owners to the daily temple ritual and associate them permanently with the divine cycle of death and rebirth. Caption: Pawerem, Priest of Bastet, 570–510 B.C.E.. Basalt, 18 1/8 × 7 1/2 × 11 1/4 in., 74 lb. (46 × 19.1 × 28.6 cm, 33.57kg) mount (mount (dimensions when installed)): 19 x 7 1/2 x 11 1/2 in. (48.3 x 19.1 x 29.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.36E. (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 statue of the goddess Taweret with hieroglyphic inscriptions.

The artifact is a dark stone statue of Taweret, an ancient Egyptian goddess associated with protection and childbirth. Taweret is depicted with a hippopotamus body, standing upright, which is typical for her portrayals. Notable features include her pregnant belly and a lion-like mane. An inscription runs along the base, with additional hieroglyphs visible on the front face. It represents typical New Kingdom or Ptolemaic artistic styles.

religious Ptolemaic good
Deities Taweret
Materials stone
Signs Ankh ×2 Was Djed
Visible text "Unclear sections of hieroglyphs with possible mention of protection."

Connections

Found at Saqqara
Materials StoneGranite

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.36E tier-2
  • BKM-Object 3945 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.