Mating Hippopotami Late Period to Ptolemaic PeriodEgypt
Description
Object Label: In Egyptian art, one symbol could represent both a trait and its opposite. The hippopotamus could represent great danger and chaos or, alternatively, fertility and protection in childbirth. The statuette of a male hippopotamus could represent the god Seth, who embodied danger, chaos, and disorder in the world. Yet the rare limestone statuette of hippopotami mating perhaps served as a symbol that preserved the fertility of the earth. And a necklace consisting of images of the female hippopotamus goddess Taweret could protect a woman in labor. Caption: Mating Hippopotami, 664–30 B.C.E.. Limestone, 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 x 11 1/2 in. (14 x 9.5 x 29.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 36.262. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum (Gavin Ashworth, photographer))
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.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 36.262 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3396 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.