Hathor Cow
Description
Object Label: Amulets In the New Kingdom, amulets represented magic in miniature form. At that time, the Egyptians frequently wore amulets proclaiming their devotion to the cult of major deities such as Thoth, god of wisdom, or Hathor, an ancient goddess associated with music and love. These charms were intended to provide protection from specific dangers. Amulets of birth-gods, for example, were believed to protect women during pregnancy and childbirth and to watch over a newborn in the first years of life. In the Eighteenth Dynasty, certain amulets began to be placed within mummy bandages to guarantee life after death. The most common included wedjat-eyes, signifying the restoration of wholeness; tyt-amulets, emblems of the goddess Isis, who restored her dead husband Osiris to life; and flowers, traditional symbols of fertility. Beads inscribed with a person’s name ensured that the memory of the individual would survive throughout eternity. So-called heart scarabs, known since the Thirteenth Dynasty, are frequently found on New Kingdom mummies. The Egyptians believed that a deceased person’s fate would be determined by weighing his or her heart against the “Feather of Truth” on a divine balance. Texts carved on heart scarabs prevented the deceased’s heart from revealing anything negative during the weighing ritual. Caption: Hathor Cow, ca. 1539–1075 B.C.E.. Electrum, 11/16 x 11/16 in. (1.8 x 1.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.807E. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
Small bronze/electrum-toned figure of a cow standing on a base, with an upright tail and a stylized head and horns.
The image shows a single, small, metal object modeled as a cow in profile facing right. The cow’s body is shown with simplified contours, a raised tail at the back, and short horn-like projections on the head; the ears and facial features are indicated but not finely detailed. The cow stands on a flat, rectangular base or plinth integrated with the metal figure. No visible hieroglyphic inscription, cartouche, or other textual elements are apparent in the photograph. The lighting suggests a warm, metallic surface consistent with the catalogue’s reported material. No clearly legible additional symbols (e.g., the full Hathor solar-disc system) are visible at this resolution, so specific iconographic attributes beyond “cow” cannot be confirmed from the image alone.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.807E tier-2
- BKM-Object 4103 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.