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

Statue of Isis Nursing the Child Horus Late PeriodMemphis

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

Description

Object Label: Birth and rebirth took place within a family. Ancient Egyptians regarded the first royal family—including Osiris, his wife Isis, and their child Horus—as the model to imitate. But even with the joy of a birth, death was present: Osiris and Isis conceived their child through magic following his murder by his jealous brother. After the procreation of Horus, Osiris retired to the afterlife as the divine king of the Netherworld, while Isis gave birth and then raised Horus until he was ready to rule Egypt. Osiris’s life, death, and rebirth into the afterlife formed a pattern that all Egyptians sought to replicate in the tomb. Using the power of language, the deceased was addressed as Osiris during the funeral ritual. Osiris was added to the personal name and written on the coffin. In this case, too, language could shape reality for the Egyptians. Caption: Statue of Isis Nursing the Child Horus, 664–332 B.C.E.. Bronze, 10 7/16 x 2 11/16 x 3 7/16 in. (26.5 x 6.9 x 8.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.371E. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

A machine reading of the photograph made Jul 2026: deities, names, signs and a description as the model saw them. Not curatorial; treat it as the model's best reading, not authority.

Connections

Found at Memphis
Materials Bronze

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 37.371E tier-2
  • BKM-Object 117027 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.