Figure of Shu Late PeriodEgypt
Description
Object Label: The Egyptians represented the relationship between sky and earth by showing the body of Nut rising in a majestic arc over the figure of the dark, fecund earth god, Geb. To prevent them from further sexual union after the birth of Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys, they were separated eternally by Shu, the god of air. Shu represented the eternal patterns of change the ancient Egyptians associated with cyclical time (neheh). His sister, the leonine goddess Tefnut, was related to the eternal sameness of linear time (djet). Like most amulets of Shu, this example shows the god kneeling with his arms upraised. The gesture symbolizes Shu's eternal role as the god who separates the deities Nut (sky) and Geb (earth). Caption: Figure of Shu, ca. 1070.–653 B.C.E.. Faience, 1 3/4 × 7/8 × 3/4 in. (4.5 × 2.2 × 1.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.954E. (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 37.954E tier-2
- BKM-Object 117533 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.