Amulet of Taweret
Third Intermediate Period–Late Period (about 1069–332 BCE)
Ancient Egyptian
Faience; 4.8 × 1.8 × 1.5 cm (1 7/8 × 11/16 × 9/16 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds provided by Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson, 1892.137
Amulet of Taweret
New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten (about 1352–1336 BCE)
Ancient Egyptian
Probably Tell el-Amarna, Egypt
Glass; 2.8 × 1 × 0.5 cm (1 1/8 × 3/8 × 3/16 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, X207
These two amulets represent the goddess Taweret (“The Great One” in Egyptian; known as Thoeris in Greek), the protector of women and children, especially women in childbirth. She is among the aha (fighter) gods who are depicted armed with knives on ivory magic wands that were probably used to trace a circle of protection around a mother and her child.[1] She is often shown with her paws resting on a tall, looped sa hieroglyph, 𓎃, the sign for “protection.”[2]1
The molded, green, faience amulet (cat. 80) portrays the goddess in her typical form as a pregnant hippo, with pendulous breasts with large nipples and the tail of a crocodile that covers her back. Her tail is detailed with a chevron pattern that imitates the scales of a crocodile. Her large, rectangular head is covered with a tripartite wig, the back of which descends down her shoulders in an inverted U pattern (see the reverse of cat. 21 for a comparable treatment of the wig). Little ears protrude from the wig. She holds her humanlike arms at her sides and rests her leonine paws on her hips. As with human representations, Taweret steps forward with her left foot. A large loop in the middle of her back allowed the amulet to be strung or attached to another surface.
2
Additional Views of Cat. 80
Side of cat. 80.
Back of cat. 80.
The cast glass amulet (cat. 81) is a simplified image of the goddess, although her characteristic swollen belly, square snout, and small feet are shown. The knob on top of the head, which is also seen on a larger glass Taweret amulet in the Borowski collection, may either have been an area through which the amulet could be pierced to be strung or a suggestion of the flat-top modius headdress that the goddess is known to wear at Amarna and elsewhere.[3]
3
Additional View of Cat. 81
Back of cat. 81.
All examples of these small, multicolored, glass hippos seem to come from Tell el-Amarna, an early center for glass production (see cat. 59 for a discussion of glass working in Egypt).[4] They are all about the same size but come in a variety of colors—white, red, pinkish, yellow, or blue spots—all on a dark, almost black, background.[5] Although the technique could be taken for an extraordinarily early example of mosaic glass (for an example of mosaic glass, see cat. 97), each amulet was made of a gather of dark glass that was probably pressed into chips of colored glass and then forced into an open mold made of baked clay or plaster.[6] One side of the Art Institute amulet has molded detail at the base of the head and on the haunch, whereas the reverse side has none, confirming that it was cast in an open mold and that the tiny figure was facing right, the dominant orientation for Egyptian images. Like the multiple hippo amulets that were strung together to make a gold collar that is currently in the British Museum, the glass hippos also may have been strung in multiples to create incredibly colorful necklaces.[7]4
Amulets in the form of Taweret first occur in the Old Kingdom and continued to be made through the whole of ancient Egyptian history.[8]5
For more on amulets, see About Amulets.6
Provenance
80.
Martin A. Ryerson (1856–1932), Chicago, 1890; transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1892.7
81.
The Art Institute of Chicago, by 1923.8
Publication History
80.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 134n3.9
81.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 134.
10
- On the knives held by the aha, see James P. Allen, The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 29; Stephen Quirke, Birth Tusks: The Armoury of Health in Context—Egypt 1800 BC, Middle Kingdom Studies 3 (London: Golden House, 2016).
- Carol Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 40, fig. 39a; back cover (illustrated on right side).
- For the amulet in the Borowski collection, which measures 4.9 cm high, see R. S. Bianchi, ed., Reflections on Ancient Glass from the Borowski Collection (Mainz: Philip von Zabern, 2002), 134. For examples of Taweret amulets pierced in order to be strung, see the Taweret charms on a Dynasty 18 necklace (British Museum, London, EA59418; published in Carol Andrews, Ancient Egyptian Jewelry [New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990], 174, fig. 160c). See also an example of Taweret with a flat-top modius headdress (Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin, 22272; published in Birgit Schlick-Nolte, “Egyptian Faience/Quartz Ceramics—Manufacture and Use Up Until the End of the Amarna Period,” in In the Light of Amarna: 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery, ed. Friederike Seyfried, exh. cat. [Berlin: Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, 2012], 106).
- Birgit Schlick-Nolte, “Glass—From the Beginning to the End of the Amarna Period,” in In the Light of Amarna: 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery, ed. Friederike Seyfried, exh. cat. (Berlin: Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, 2012), 113.
- For a glass example with yellow, blue, and red on a dark background, see amulet of Taweret (Art Institute of Chicago, X26).
- On the technique of placing powdered glass in open molds, see Schlick-Nolte, “Glass—From the Beginning to the End of the Amarna Period,” 113. On the technique of using chips of glass to create a pattern, I thank Sidney M. Goldstein, personal communication, 2018.
- See above n. 3 for the British Museum necklace.
- Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt, 40.
Emily Teeter, “Cats. 80–81 Taweret Amulets,” 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/10.53269/9780865593213/85.
© 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/.
