NEW KINGDOM, 18TH DYNASTY, 1550-1069 B.C.

During the New Kingdom, weights in both stone and bronze often took the form of animals, with the reclining bovine the most popular of all shapes. Weights in the form of hippopotami heads are comparatively rare, with only a handful of examples documented. An important parallel in the Petrie Museum excavated in the Seth Temple at Naqada bears an inscription indicating that it totals 10 qedet, thus forming a full deben weight, usually reckoned at around 91 grams (see S. Quirke in Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, no. 88). Another in Cleveland, smaller than the example in the Petrie Museum and similar in scale to the example presented here, probably reflects a weight under a full deben (see no. 248, p. 309 in L. Berman, Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art). It is possible that the Egyptian word for hippopotamus, deb, evoked the name of the deben gold weight, and thus these objects form a play on words.