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Statue of Thoth as an Ibis
Unknown · Ptolemaic period (attributed on style), 332-30 BC
A white ibis lies at rest on a wooden base, its long neck lowered and its curved beak and legs made of dark copper alloy against the pale stuccoed body. The bird is forty-seven centimetres long, carved from acacia wood, coated in plaster and painted white with black on the wingtips and tail, just as the living bird appears along the Nile. The base may carry the image of a snake pierced by knives, a sign of evil defeated. Look at the contrast between the smooth painted feathers and the glint of metal at the head.
The ibis was the sacred bird of Thoth, god of writing, wisdom and the moon, and in the Ptolemaic period millions of them were bred, mummified and buried in catacombs at Saqqara, Hermopolis and elsewhere. Wooden figures like this one topped the boxes that held such mummies or stood in shrines as offerings to the god. Dated on style to the Ptolemaic centuries, the statue was bought by the Louvre in nineteen forty-nine, and it is a reminder that Egyptian piety could be expressed in an animal at rest.
Did You Know? Wood analysis in twenty fourteen identified the timber as white acacia, a Nile valley tree, confirming that both bird and base were made locally.
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