NYC - Brooklyn Museum: Offering Scenes of King Sobekhotep III
Offering Scenes of King Sobekhotep III
Quartzite
Second Intermediate Period, Dynasty XIII, reign of Sobekhotep III (circa 1744-1741 B.C.)
From Sheel, an island near Elephantine Island an Aswan
77,19a-c, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Sobekhotep III offers vessels to the goddesses Satis (left) and Anukis (right) in eliefs that probably formed part of a naos, or a shrine for a cult image. These scenes represent a basic element of Egyptian temple decoation: the king, who theoretically conducts the cult in every temple every day, offers to deities, who in turn, bless him and--through him--Egypt. Both goddesses tender three "life" hieroglyphs (ankh) to the king, their number indicating plurality and the idea of "all." In order to suggest a timeless and universal religious truth, these scens do not indicate a specific time or setting. Some such scenes may also have been magically empowered to act as that which they represented.
These back-to-back scenes seem symmetrical, but deviations from symmetry are noticeable in the inscriptions, the goddesses' crowsn, and the king's faces. If the Egyptians abhorred the chaotic and the random, they also disliked mechanical rigidity. Ma'at is the concept of order or equilibrium with some flexibility. Most Egyptian art is well balanced rather than truly symmetrical.
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The Brooklyn Museum, sitting at the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights near Prospect Park, is the second largest art museum in New York City. Opened in 1897 under the leadership of Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences president John B. Woodward, the 560,000-square foot, Beaux-Arts building houses a permanent collection including more than one-and-a-half million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art.
The Brooklyn Museum was designated a landmark by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1966.
National Historic Register #770009
NYC - Brooklyn Museum: Offering Scenes of King Sobekhotep III
Offering Scenes of King Sobekhotep III
Quartzite
Second Intermediate Period, Dynasty XIII, reign of Sobekhotep III (circa 1744-1741 B.C.)
From Sheel, an island near Elephantine Island an Aswan
77,19a-c, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Sobekhotep III offers vessels to the goddesses Satis (left) and Anukis (right) in eliefs that probably formed part of a naos, or a shrine for a cult image. These scenes represent a basic element of Egyptian temple decoation: the king, who theoretically conducts the cult in every temple every day, offers to deities, who in turn, bless him and--through him--Egypt. Both goddesses tender three "life" hieroglyphs (ankh) to the king, their number indicating plurality and the idea of "all." In order to suggest a timeless and universal religious truth, these scens do not indicate a specific time or setting. Some such scenes may also have been magically empowered to act as that which they represented.
These back-to-back scenes seem symmetrical, but deviations from symmetry are noticeable in the inscriptions, the goddesses' crowsn, and the king's faces. If the Egyptians abhorred the chaotic and the random, they also disliked mechanical rigidity. Ma'at is the concept of order or equilibrium with some flexibility. Most Egyptian art is well balanced rather than truly symmetrical.
*
The Brooklyn Museum, sitting at the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights near Prospect Park, is the second largest art museum in New York City. Opened in 1897 under the leadership of Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences president John B. Woodward, the 560,000-square foot, Beaux-Arts building houses a permanent collection including more than one-and-a-half million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art.
The Brooklyn Museum was designated a landmark by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1966.
National Historic Register #770009