Relief of the Nile Flood Genies
Unknown · Twenty-fifth Dynasty, c. 713-655 BC
Two identical figures walk one behind the other, each carrying a table of offerings and a ewer. They have men's bodies but heavy, drooping breasts and a rounded belly, and water plants sprout from their heads. This is Hapy, the spirit of the Nile flood, shown as many spirits at once, for every district of Egypt had its own Hapy bringing its share of the yearly inundation. The band below is a frieze of protective signs, ankh, was and djed, life, power and stability, repeated like a chant. The block is sandstone, assembled from several fragments, and the hieroglyphs include a cartouche and ritual formulas.
Reliefs of this kind ran along the base of temple walls, where the fat, generous figures of the flood formed a procession of plenty entering the sanctuary. The inscription names a person of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, when kings from Kush in the south ruled Egypt and restored its temples in a deliberately archaic style, which explains the clean, old fashioned cutting here. The Louvre bought the block in 1980. Before it, think of the river outside the temple rising each summer, and of the whole country waiting to see how high Hapy would climb.
Did You Know? Hapy is a man with a woman's breasts and a heavy belly, because the flood that fed Egypt was imagined as a nourishing body.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.