Pawerem, Priest of Bastet
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-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.
Dark basalt statue of a seated Egyptian priest holding a framed, inscribed tablet with a small standing figure/figure-like form inside the frame.
The image shows a standing or seated male figure rendered in dark, glossy basalt. The figure holds a rectangular, thick frame or panel at the front, enclosing a small, centrally placed human-like form. Around and/or on the frame and base are dense bands of incised hieroglyphs arranged in registers. Additional hieroglyphs are visible on the plinth/base beneath the figure, with multiple rows of signs. The upper part of the object includes a back/shoulder element and the figure’s knees/legs are modeled in the traditional schematic style. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is legible, and no clear cartouche is identifiable at this resolution. The visible inscriptions appear Egyptian (hieroglyphic), but the specific words/names cannot be read confidently from the provided image.
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.