Statuette of a Lion-Headed God, Probably Horus of Buto
Late Period (664–332 BCE)
Ancient Egyptian
Copper alloy; 25.4 × 13.7 × 6.4 (10 × 5 3/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds provided by Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson, 1894.972
Ancient Egyptians admired lions for their power and ferocity—qualities that they also revered in kings and deities. This large statuette depicts a lion-headed god seated upon a cushioned, low-backed throne with his feet planted firmly on a footrest. The throne’s sides are undecorated, and the statuette is uninscribed, leaving some ambiguity as to the god’s identity.1
His elegantly modeled feline face, with its delicate whiskers and expressive eyes, is framed by a small, tufted mane that rests over a striated tripartite wig. With a large section of hair in the back and one over each shoulder in the front, the tripartite wig was worn by both mortals and deities. As an artistic convention, the wig’s presence enabled Egyptian artists to smooth the transition between the animal heads and human torsos of many gods and goddesses who made up the Egyptian pantheon. All that remains of the god’s headdress is a snake tail trailing down the back of his wig and a rough patch on the crown of his head where this element was once affixed (fig. 1). These traces strongly suggest that his head was once crowned simply with a large uraeus.
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Fig. 1
Top of cat. 33. The top of the head retains traces of the headdress, which once represented a large uraeus serpent.
Here, the god wears a pleated shendyt kilt secured by a belt embellished with incised decoration. His upper body is bare, save for a beaded broad collar that spans the space between the two lappets of the wig. He extends his fisted right hand, which hovers just above and to the side of his thigh; his left arm is missing above the elbow.[1] While his arms are made of solid copper alloy, the rest of the figure (including the throne) is hollow.3
Several ancient Egyptian deities claimed a leonine form. While goddesses such as Sekhmet and Wadjet (compare cat. 26) are most familiar, lion-headed male deities like the one represented in this statue—including the war god Mahes and Wadjet’s son Horus—are also known.[2] Mahes was primarily worshipped at Leontopolis (now Tell el-Muqdam) and Bubastis (the home of his mother Bastet), while Horus son of Wadjet is attested at Buto (now Tell el-Fara‘in) and Sais in the Delta.[3] The two share very similar iconography, and without an inscription or findspot it is difficult to differentiate representations of them with certainty.4
In these instances, headdresses can provide a clue. The traces on the Chicago statuette suggest that the god was once crowned with a large uraeus. Many goddesses could take the form of this rearing cobra who served as a protector of both gods and kings, including Wadjet, the tutelary goddess of Lower Egypt. Her incarnation as the uraeus serpent would have made this large cobra a particularly appropriate emblem for her son. Indeed, Katja Weiß has argued that lion-headed gods who wear a snake headdress should be identified as Horus of Pe (Buto), Son of Wadjet.[4] Close parallels to the Chicago statuette can be found in a group of copper alloy statues from Sais dating to Dynasty 26 that include representations of a lion-headed god wearing a large uraeus on his head and seated on a low-backed throne.[5] It seems likely, therefore, that Horus of Buto is the god depicted in this beautifully sculpted copper alloy statuette.5
Additional Views of Cat. 33
Front of cat. 33.
Back of cat. 33, detail.
Back of cat. 33, detail.
For more on copper alloy statuettes, see About Copper Alloy Statuettes.6
Provenance
Reverend Chauncey Murch (1859–1907), Luxor, Egypt; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1894.7
Publication History
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of The Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 104 (as Sekhmet).8
Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ed., When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, with contributions by Mary C. Greuel et al., exh. cat. (New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 2014), 26, fig. 1-13; 101, no. 104.
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- Traces of the proper left hand are visible on the figure’s thigh.
- The representation of both male and female deities with a lion head has led to many figures of male gods being misidentified as goddesses, including this statuette, which Thomas George Allen identified as a representation of Sekhmet. See Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of The Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 104.
- Buto is a site where the two ancient cities of Pe and Dep were located. Horus of Pe, the version of Horus worshipped at the site, is often referred to as Horus of Buto in modern scholarship. Wadjet was sometimes identified as the mother of Horus of Buto, a specific form of the god that can be depicted as a falcon- or lion-headed man. This connection is likely an extension of her role in caring for the infant Horus after his birth at nearby Khemmis. In that version of the myth, Horus’s mother is Isis, who hid him in the marshes to protect him from his throne-seeking uncle Seth.
- Katja Weiß, Ägyptische Tier- und Götterbronzen aus Unterägypten: Untersuchungen zu Typus, Ikonographie und Funktion sowie der Bedeutung innerhalb der Kulturkontakte zu Griechenland (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 1:203. According to her classifications, seated statues wearing the hemhem crown should also be included in this group, while lion-headed gods that stand in an active pose (often holding a scimitar) should be identified as Mahes. Note that Weiß employs the alternative name for the god, Horus of Pe.
- Jacques Vandier, “Ouadjet et l’Horus léontocéphale de Bouto: À propos d’un bronze du Musée de Chaalis,” Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot 55 (1967): 7–75; Luc Delvaux, “Les bronzes de Saïs, les dieux de Bouto et les rois des Marais,” in Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years; Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur, ed. Willy Clarysse, Antoon Schoors, and Harco Willems (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 1:551–68. They are part of a corpus of material from Sais that includes several large statues of his mother Wadjet, many with incised decoration on the sides of the throne that relates to the mythologies and worship of the gods in that region. See Vandier, “Ouadjet et l’Horus léontocéphale de Bouto,” 7–75; Luc Delvaux, “Les bronzes de Saïs, les dieux de Bouto et les rois des Marais,” in Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years; Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur, ed. Willy Clarysse, Antoon Schoors, and Harco Willems (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 1:551–68. This imagery indicates that these male statues wearing the uraeus are indeed her son Horus.
Ashley F. Arico, “Cat. 33 Statuette of a Lion-Headed God, Probably Horus of Buto,” in Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago by Emily Teeter and Ashley F. Arico, ed. Ashley F. Arico (Art Institute of Chicago, 2025), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593213/48.
© 2025 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
