Amulet of Imsety, One of the Four Sons of Horus
Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BCE)
Ancient Egyptian
Glass; 4.2 × 1.3 × 0.4 cm (1 11/16 × 9/16 × 3/16 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds provided by Norman W. Harris, Robert H. Fleming, Henry H. Getty, and Charles L. Hutchinson, 1894.142
This blue glass amulet depicts a human-headed god standing on a thin rectangular base. While the conventions of two-dimensional ancient Egyptian art usually show standing male figures with both shoulders oriented toward the viewer and their left legs advanced, this god is represented fully in profile with his two feet together—an indication that he is mummified. For its small size, the amulet is remarkably detailed, with the god’s plump cheeks, knobby chin, and fisted hands all crisply rendered. His mummiform body is tightly bound with the exception of his hands, which peek out from the mummy wrappings to grasp a long strip of fabric that has been doubled over, forming a loop at the top. This fabric evokes the linen strips that were wound around the deceased during the mummification process.1
The mummiform pose and strip of fabric identify this figure as one of the Four Sons of Horus—Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef, and Qebehsenuef. These funerary gods protected the internal organs that were removed during embalming. The human visage of this figure suggests that he is Imsety, who was always represented with a human head.[1] His brethren were more commonly depicted with animal heads starting in the later New Kingdom, when canopic jar lids were modeled in the shape of the head of the deity responsible for protecting the organs enclosed inside. Thus, the human-headed Imsety was used for canopic jars containing the liver, the baboon-headed Hapy for those with the lungs, the jackal-headed Duamutef for those with the stomach, and the falcon-headed Qebehsenuef for those with the intestines.2
During the Third Intermediate Period mummification practices changed, with the embalmed organs now returned to the body cavity in small packages. It was during this era that sets of amulets depicting the Four Sons of Horus were mass-produced with a wide range of quality and detail, first in faience and later in glass.[2]3
Made from an opaque dark blue glass that today has a mostly matte surface, this amulet was produced using an open-backed mold, leaving the back of the amulet flat and undecorated (fig. 1; for another amulet made using this method, see cat. 84).[3] Amulets of the Four Sons of Horus could accompany the embalmed viscera, be sewn or folded into mummy wrappings, or incorporated into bead nets. This example is unpierced, indicating that it would likely have been secured with mummy wrappings like those the deity is shown to be holding.4
Fig. 1
Back of cat. 72.
For more on amulets, see About Amulets.5
Provenance
The Art Institute of Chicago, acquired in 1894.6
Publication History
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 130.
7
- His name is spelled “Imset” in Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1923), 130. The name is also sometimes rendered “Amset” in English.
- Carol Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 45. See also three additional glass amulets of the human-headed Imsety in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (1893.76, 1893.77, 1893.78).
- For more on Egyptian mold-made glass amulets with additional examples, see Véronique Arveiller-Dulong and Marie-Dominique Nenna, Les verres antiques du Musée du Louvre III (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2011), 267–97.
Ashley F. Arico, “Cat. 72 Amulet of Imsety, One of the Four Sons of Horus,” 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/10.53269/9780865593213/78.
© 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/.
