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Lot Essay
One of about 400 known magical stelae featuring the child-god Horus-Shed (“Horus the Saviour”) standing atop crocodiles and mastering dangerous desert animals such as snakes, scorpions, lions, and oryxes, this small cippus carved in black steatite is covered on every surface with divine images and incantations protecting the owner from harm.
Above the head of Horus-Shed is the head of the bearded benevolent dwarf god Bes, while a series of deities in human and animal form flanks him on the left and right, together with a papyrus and lotus, emblematic symbols of the North and South. Although it is often suggested that water was poured over these magical stelae to capture their efficacy, Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi who has exhaustively studied this category of stela suggests that the magical power could have been conveyed also by rubbing or kissing, pointing to ancient signs of wear, as on the present example. The lunette on the reverse features a seated multi-headed solar deity against the background of the sun disc, enclosed within upraised ka-arms, and flanked by baboons giving praise to the rising sun. The texts on every surface evoke the cure by Re of the infant Horus from snake and scorpion bites while he was exposed to these animals in the papyrus swamps where he was hidden by his mother Isis. The dark green or black stones from which these cippi are usually carved may have been intended to evoke snakeskin.
Larger examples such as the famous Metternich Stela now in New York feature extensive texts and representations, while others are incorporated into stelophorous statues. A similar example in the Brooklyn Museum (60.73) of Ptolemaic period has been extensively studied by H. Jacquet-Gordon ('Two Stelae of Horus-on-the-Crocodiles', in Brooklyn Museum Annual 7, 1965-66, pp. 53-64).
Above the head of Horus-Shed is the head of the bearded benevolent dwarf god Bes, while a series of deities in human and animal form flanks him on the left and right, together with a papyrus and lotus, emblematic symbols of the North and South. Although it is often suggested that water was poured over these magical stelae to capture their efficacy, Heike Sternberg-el Hotabi who has exhaustively studied this category of stela suggests that the magical power could have been conveyed also by rubbing or kissing, pointing to ancient signs of wear, as on the present example. The lunette on the reverse features a seated multi-headed solar deity against the background of the sun disc, enclosed within upraised ka-arms, and flanked by baboons giving praise to the rising sun. The texts on every surface evoke the cure by Re of the infant Horus from snake and scorpion bites while he was exposed to these animals in the papyrus swamps where he was hidden by his mother Isis. The dark green or black stones from which these cippi are usually carved may have been intended to evoke snakeskin.
Larger examples such as the famous Metternich Stela now in New York feature extensive texts and representations, while others are incorporated into stelophorous statues. A similar example in the Brooklyn Museum (60.73) of Ptolemaic period has been extensively studied by H. Jacquet-Gordon ('Two Stelae of Horus-on-the-Crocodiles', in Brooklyn Museum Annual 7, 1965-66, pp. 53-64).