otter admiration, egypt

Gift of Lily S. Place, 1923 www.metmuseum.org

Look at this otter!  Isn't he the greatest? It is just as well, Museum friends, that you are not in my office right now listening to my high-pitched squeals of delight.  According to the record page at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this fellow (made of cupreous metal, that is, copper or mostly-copper alloy) dates from Late Period or Ptolemaic Egypt, 664-30 B.C.  It seems that what the Egyptians knew, and we have forgotten, is that when otters do this adorable paws-up move that they are actually adoring the sun.  Is that a sun disk on his head?  Yes, along with the cobra symbolizing Wadjet, the goddess of Lower Egypt.  Otters were part of Wadjet's identification as one of the goddesses called "Eye of Ra" (or eye of the sun).  Here's another otter in worship from the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna.