Enigmatic Relief Egypt
Description
Object Label: The subject of this relief is uncertain. The image of a pregnant hippopotamus with a lion’s mane is similar to the goddess Taweret. This goddess, with the addition of a crocodile on her back and another nipping her paw, is often found in Egyptian astronomical texts in connection with the northern constellations. However, the inscription at the left names Hapi, the god of the Nile’s inundation, who has nothing to do with the stars. Perhaps the strong denotations of fertility of both Taweret and Hapi hold a clue to the meaning of the scene. Caption: Enigmatic Relief, ca. 664–30 B.C.E.. Limestone, 14 5/16 x 13 1/2 x 2 3/4 in., 23 lb. (36.4 x 34.3 x 7 cm, 23 lb.). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 70.2. (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.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 70.2 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3789 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.