Statue of Isis Nursing the Child Horus
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-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 depicting a seated female deity holding a child.
The artifact is a small statue representing a female deity, likely a goddess, seated on a throne while holding a child on her lap. The figure wears a headdress featuring bovine horns and a solar disk, often associated with the goddess Hathor or Isis. The style is typical of Egyptian depictions of divine figures, with detailed facial features and a calm, serene expression. The child may represent a divine or royal infant, possibly Horus.
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.