Egyptian head of a cat, Late Dynastic Period, 747-332 BC
Bronze
Height 5.5cm
10843
£ 8,200.00
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Further images
A cast bronze head of a cat, with strong bone structure, the pricked and gently inward curving ears are unusually large, the eyes in relief.
A head such as this...
A cast bronze head of a cat, with strong bone structure, the pricked and gently inward curving ears are unusually large, the eyes in relief.
A head such as this would have surmounted either a mummified cat or a statue whose body was composed of another material, and used as a votive offerings at temple sanctuaries to Bastet.
Cats were domesticated from the Middle Kingdom onwards. A great number were mummified in the Late Period and presented at the cult centre of Bastet at Bubastis of the Delta, and from the Late Period through to the Ptolemaic you find such cast cat heads being offered.
A head such as this would have surmounted either a mummified cat or a statue whose body was composed of another material, and used as a votive offerings at temple sanctuaries to Bastet.
Cats were domesticated from the Middle Kingdom onwards. A great number were mummified in the Late Period and presented at the cult centre of Bastet at Bubastis of the Delta, and from the Late Period through to the Ptolemaic you find such cast cat heads being offered.
Provenance
Private collection of an archaeologist who died in the 1960s, London, UK; thence by descentLiterature
Compare Jiro Kondo (ed.), The Gateway to Ancient Egypt through the Kikugawa Egyptian Collection in Japan (Yokohama, 1951), no.1981
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