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Details
LOT 0035
Egyptian Bronze Figure of a Shrew
LATE-PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 664-30 B.C.
1 7/8 in. (145 grams, 73 mm).
Modelled in the round in a crouching pose on a rectangular base with an attachment peg.
Provenance
From the collection of a gentleman, acquired on the London art market in the 1990s.
Literature
Cf. Roeder, G., Ägyptische Bronzefiguren II, Berlin, 1956, pl. 54g, for similar.
Footnotes
This figure most likely comes from a shrew coffin or votive statuette. The dwarf shrew (Crocidura nana) and Flower’s shrew (Crocidura floweri) were among many animal species buried in dedicated cemeteries across various parts of Egypt. Ironically, these tiny creatures symbolised Horus in his raptor-headed form — a figure who, in reality, would have preyed upon them. Shrews were associated with Khenty-irty, the “seeing-and-blind god,” due to their ability to navigate darkness. It may be possible to read the shrew’s symbolism as that of seeking light in darkness, representing the Egyptian belief in the deceased’s journey through the hours of the night before rebirth at dawn. Radiographic analysis of a bundle containing about twenty-one shrews shows that they were dried whole, with no evisceration, preserved by being ‘pickled’ in natron.
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