Female Figurine
Description
Object Label: Statuettes of naked women with incomplete legs, like this example, have been found in Middle Kingdom tombs and houses. Early Egyptologists mistakenly identified them as concubines intended to provide the spirits of men with an eternity of sexual pleasure. Recent studies show that both men and women used these figures to ensure fertility. In the home, they were believed to enhance a wife’s fruitfulness and a husband’s potency by invoking Hathor, the goddess of sexual love. As tomb offerings, they guaranteed the deceased’s sexual power in the afterlife. Caption: Female Figurine, ca. 1938–1630 B.C.E.. Faience, 2 x 5 3/16 in. (5.1 x 13.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 44.226. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
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 faience figurine depicting a female form with stylized features.
The artifact is a faience figurine representing a female figure. The statuette features exaggerated feminine characteristics, with a focus on the bust and hips. The style suggests artistic conventions from ancient Egyptian art, with simplified and abstracted forms. The figurine lacks intricate detailing but showcases the smooth, glazed surface typical of faience objects.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 44.226 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3481 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.