LATE PERIOD TO PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 4TH-3RD CENTURY B.C.

Details

AN EGYPTIAN BRONZE LION-HEADED WADJET
LATE PERIOD TO PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 4TH-3RD CENTURY B.C.
The goddess enthroned, her feet resting on a cushion, wearing a tightly-fitted ankle-length sheath, her arms both bent at the elbows and held at her sides, her hands fisted around now-missing attributes, the left hand with the palm in, perhaps originally holding an ankh, the right hand with the palm down, perhaps originally holding a papyrus scepter, wearing a plaited tripartite wig, a uraeus at her forehead, crowned with a cobra-modius supporting a double plume and a solar disk between elongated cow horns, her well modelled head with a finely incised mane, whiskers, and hairs along the top of the head and within the erect ears, her rounded breasts with the nipples indicated, the back of the throne incised with a falcon topped with a solar disk, its wings outstretched, lotus blossoms below, the sides with an incised feather pattern, an incised inscription around the cushion below her feet, reading: "Wadjet who gives life (to/for) Tasenhor(?)"
15½ in. (39.4 cm.) high

Provenance

Monte Carlo Private Collection.
Marcel Ebnöther, Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 1970s.

Literature

M. Page-Gasser and A. Wiese, Égypte: Moments d'éternité, Mainz, 1997, no. 182, pp. 271-272.

Exhibited

Basel, Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig, and Geneva, Musée Rath, 18 March 1997 - 11 January 1998.

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Lot Essay

Wadjet was the tutelary deity of Lower (northern) Egypt, the area of the Nile Delta. She was one of the "Two Ladies," the vulture goddess Nekhbet being the other. Every Pharaoh included in his long and complicated titulary a "Two Ladies" name. This was usually listed second in the order of his titles. Her name Wadjet means "the green one."

Wadjet is almost always shown as a cobra, but she was often combined with the lion-headed Sekhmet, the goddess of war and pestilence.

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