Hathor Capital
Unknown · Ptolemaic period, 332-30 BC
A woman's face looks straight at you, which is rare in Egyptian art, where almost everyone is shown in profile. The wig falls in three thick masses framed by a rosette and a broad collar, and the ears are those of a cow. This is Hathor, goddess of love, music and joy, and the block is one face of a capital that once crowned a column. Capitals of this kind carried her face on all four sides, so that she looked out over every approach, with a small shrine shaped like a sistrum rattle above the heads. Notice the shallow modelling; the block is only eleven centimetres thick, a slice of a much larger stone.
Hathor columns were used from the Middle Kingdom onward, but the style here belongs to the Ptolemaic period, when Greek kings paid for vast temples such as Dendera, whose hall of twenty four Hathor columns is the most famous example. The soft limestone was meant to be painted, and the flatness of the features would have been sharpened by colour. The piece belonged to Henry Salt, the British consul general in Egypt, and came to the Louvre with his second collection in 1826.
Did You Know? Hathor is the only Egyptian deity regularly shown full face rather than in profile, and her cow's ears give her away every time.
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