Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access) · statue
Standing Hippopotamus
Description
Faience
AI image analysis GPT-4o-2024-08-06
Machine-generated from the object's image on May 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.
A small blue faience hippopotamus figurine with decorative patterns.
This artifact is a blue faience sculpture of a hippopotamus, often referred to as a 'William' in popular culture. The piece is covered with lotus flower and other plant motifs, painted in darker colors. The style is typical of faience works, known for their glossy and colorful finish. Such figures were common in the Middle Kingdom period as representations of the Nile's life-giving and destructive forces.
decorative
Middle Kingdom
excellent
Materials
faience
Cross-references (4)
- Wikidata-Q Q116243477 tier-1
- Collection-QID Q160236 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
- Inventory-Number 26.7.898 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
- MET-Object 545724 tier-2 (wikidata-mediated)
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Metropolitan Museum of Art — Egyptian Art (Open Access).
- 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.