These amulets are two very different representations of Thoth, the god of wisdom. One, of light green, glazed faience (cat. 82), shows him as a standing man with the head of an ibis. He wears a tripartite wig, a broad collar, and a knee-length pleated kilt. He is shown in classic Egyptian fashion, with broad shoulders, toned abdominal muscles, a narrow waist, arms at his sides, and his left foot extended. Even in its small scale, this amulet manages to portray the musculature of the legs and arms and the details of the hands and feet. Like a miniature statue, it has a back pillar and a pedestal base. It is pierced at the level of the neck to be strung or attached to the mummy.
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Additional Views of Cat. 82

The other amulet (cat. 83), sculpted from steatite (also known as soapstone) and covered with green glaze, shows Thoth as a squatting, hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas), his chest and back covered with a shaggy coat.^[1] He has a long muzzle and deep indentations along his nose. His front paws rest on his knees. His prominent phallus is visible between his legs and his tail curves around his right side. His head is topped with the lunar disk in its waxing and waning forms (see cat. 29 for more on the lunar disk), signaling his association with the moon. A loop of steatite carved at the juncture of the top of his head and the lower part of the disk allowed the amulet to be strung or sewn to another surface.2

Additional Views of Cat. 83

Thoth was among the most important of the Egyptian gods, and he appears in many different contexts. He was credited with the invention of writing; he mediated in the battles between Horus and Seth; and he presented the wedjat eye as a symbol of good health and wholeness.^[2] In funerary contexts, in his human-ibis form, Thoth records the verdict of the weighing of the heart of the deceased—the judgment of the dead before the gods. In the Late Period, Thoth amulets were usually placed on the chests of the mummies.^[3]3

Baboons and ibises, as manifestations of Thoth, were mummified and buried in temples in north Saqqara, Thebes, Tuna el-Gebel, and elsewhere in Egypt. The baboons were imported from Nubia, where they had been bred in captivity, while the birds, which are naturally migratory, are thought to have been raised in Egypt.^[4]
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For more on amulets, see About Amulets.5

Provenance

82.
Martin A. Ryerson (1856–1932), Chicago, 1890; transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1892.6

83.
Reverend Chauncey Murch (1859–1907), Luxor, Egypt; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1894.7

Publication History

82.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 132n3.8

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), 92, no. 32.9

83.
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 133.10

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), 93, no. 34.
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