About Me

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Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Friday, June 30, 2017

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.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That is so cool! I did not know there even were otters in ancient Egypt, much less that they appeared in art.