Heart Scarab of the Divine Father Hori
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: Heart Scarab of the Divine Father Hori, ca. 1539–1075 B.C.E.. Stone, 2 5/16 × 1 15/16 × 9/16 in. (5.8 × 4.9 × 1.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.479E. (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.
A dark green/black stone object shaped like an oval “heart scarab” with a rounded top and flat base, photographed against a plain light background.
The image shows a single small stone amulet with an overall heart-like/oval body. The top is rounded and the sides curve inward slightly toward the bottom, with a flat or nearly flat lower surface. There are two small, rounded protrusions on the left and right sides at about mid-height. No carved hieroglyphs, inscriptions, or legible markings are visible on the photographed surface, and no attached cord or mounting is shown. The stone surface appears mottled with wear/pitting and light speckling, consistent with weathering of a carved stone amulet. The photograph provides no clear evidence of specific deities or a royal name tied to the title.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 37.479E tier-2
- BKM-Object 4042 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.