LATE PERIOD - PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 664-30 B.C.

Octave Marie Joseph Kérim Homberg, Jr., born on 19th January 1876 in Paris, was a French diplomat, banker, author and one of France’s foremost financiers. During World War I, he appealed to the United States and the United Kingdom for loans for the financing of France's war spending and participated in the 1915 Anglo-French Financial Commission. He also headed the commission of bankers and economists in France in 1917 and was a leader in the movement to stabilize the franc in the post-WW I period. He was a diverse collector with a distinguished eye for beauty. He inherited some works from his father, Octave Homberg (1844-1907), but also amassed pieces from a wide range of cultures, including Chinese bronzes, Persian miniatures and textiles, Medieval sculptures and also 18th century furniture. His collection was sold at Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1931.
This beautifully detailed hollow cast bronze Horus falcon wears an incised broad collar and the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt fronted by a uraeus. The feathers are finely incised, and the well-modelled head has a hooked beak and typical falcon facial markings. Horus, lord of the sky and the god of kingship, is among Egypt's oldest deities and the falcon soaring in the Egyptian sky embodied the god's qualities. In the Egyptian pantheon Horus was represented as a falcon or falcon-headed man. As heir to the divine kingship of Egypt, here he wears the royal uraeus and the double crown.