Asset number
1190729001
Description
Glazed limestone statuette of a baboon; who stands for the Egyptian god Thoth. Discrete layer of greenish glaze survives overall. Hard ginger coloured material =limestone? Not faience or steatite. Left side and arm missing, abrasions on face and head. Sits on roughly shaped oval base. Pose originally seated with arms resting on knees. Finely modelled with face, muzzle and eyes shown without fur and naturalistically depicted; small eyes set high, nasal ridge between eyes, nostrils modelled, but broken off at tip of muzzle; mouth shown closed as horizontal line. Fur distinguished in different anatomical areas: either side of face is indicated by horizontal dashes; cape of fur, typical of male baboon, is marked by large vertical incised diamonds, as well as vertical striations,. it covers back down to projecting edge just above tail and bottom, runs up and over the forearm at elbow, and curves down in front, before lifting up to other arm (now lost); underneath layer of fur which appears below cape is indicated by horizontal rows of vertical striations. Tail is modelled in relief and curved round to right with slight indication of callosities either side.
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Using this image
Commercial use
To license images for charged-for journals and publications, and other commercial uses, please contact British Museum Images.
Contact BM images
Non-commercial use
You are permitted to use images from the British Museum website subject to our terms of use.
The image will be released to you under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. You can read more about the British Museum and Creative Commons here.
Download this image
New photography
If you cannot see an image that you want on the British Museum website, you can order new photography from us.
Order new image