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The Goddess Sekhmet
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SM S119. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Justin Piperger
The Goddess Sekhmet
XVIIIth or XIXth Dynasty
Bronze, cast solid
Height: 24.3cm
Museum number: S119
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 19
Not on display
Curatorial note
A figure of the goddess Sekhmet with a lioness head, standing, holding a papyrus-headed staff. Headdress: wig with lappets over the shoulders, circular crown with uraeus (cobra) in front; from the crown rise two pinion-feathers and two horns with the disc of the sun between them.
Provenance
Unrecorded; in Soane's collection by c.1826 as it appears in a woodcut vignette published in John Britton, Union of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, 1827, p.31. Britton refers to them (Union, p. 50) as follows: 'there are many other relics of Egyptian antiquity in this collection, some of which are represented in page 31, in union with other grotesque figures from Hindostan, the Gold Coast &c. The objects delineated in the wood-cut are small bronze figures, grouped by the artist. They represent some of theose monsters which men in a half civilized state first designed and then worshipped....'. [Helen Dorey, 2011]
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