Sakhmet
Description
Object Label: The lion goddess Sakhmet represented the eye of the sun god Re, which alerted him to all potential enemies. Her aggressive protection of him could be so fierce that in one myth she threatened all human existence through her raging attacks. Only beer—dyed red to resemble human blood—could placate Sakhmet; the beer returned her to a quieter, housecat-like disposition. Her story incorporating bloodlike red recalled for the Egyptians the annual Nile flood, also colored red, because of the silt it carried, and thus tied Sakhmet to a powerful force of nature. Caption: Sakhmet, 664–332 B.C.E.. Bronze, 3 7/8 x 1 3/8 x 1 1/8 in. (9.8 x 3.5 x 2.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.405E. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum (Gavin Ashworth, photographer))
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 bronze figurine depicting a seated feline-headed deity.
The artifact is a bronze statuette showing a seated figure with the head of a lioness, possibly representing the goddess Sekhmet. The style is typical of ancient Egyptian religious artifacts, with detailed facial features and a stylized manner typical of representations of deities. The figure is wearing a broad collar and appears to be resting its arms on its knees.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.405E tier-2
- BKM-Object 117059 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.