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

Relief of a Hippopotamus

Accession: 67.175.2
Find spot: Mit Rahina, Egypt, Egypt
Period: Late Period
Dynasty: Dynasty 26
Date: ca. 589 B.C.E.–570 B.C.E.
Date range: 589 BCE – 589 BCE
Materials: ['Gypsum or gesso gypsum']
Height: 14.5 cm
Width: 16.5 cm
Repository: Brooklyn Museum
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Cite & export

Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art, Relief of a Hippopotamus (67.175.2). Egyptian Inscriptions Database. https://egyptianinscriptions.org/object/18335

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Description

Object Label: This relief fragment presents a female hippopotamus in connection with "The Feast of the White One," a feast that dates back to the Old Kingdom (Dynasties III–VI) but whose meaning is still not clearly understood. The animal seems to be a manifestation of either a deity associated with fertility or protection or possibly a deity localized in Lower Egypt. She stands on a stylized baseline, behind which 15 a papyrus column. Below are the hieroglyph for "festival" and traces of another, indecipherable hieroglyph. In the completed scene the animal would have faced a figure of a king presenting offerings. Caption: Relief of a Hippopotamus, ca. 589 B.C.E.–570 B.C.E.. Gypsum or gesso gypsum, 5 11/16 × 6 1/2 × 1 5/16 in. (14.5 × 16.5 × 3.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 67.175.2. (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.

Fragment depicting an animal relief.

The artifact is a fragment of a limestone relief showing the image of an animal, likely an elephant, carved in profile. The style is typical of Egyptian stone carvings with clear lines and a simplistic representation of the creature. The relief is bordered by two horizontal lines, suggesting it might have been part of a larger scene.

daily life unknown fragmentary

Materials limestone

Connections

Materials Limestone

Cross-references (2)

BKM-Accession 67.175.2 tier-2
BKM-Object 92724 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.