Statue of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris
Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BCE)
- Medium
- Wood, preparation layer, pigment, gold, and textile
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 62.9 × 12.7 × 27.3 cm (24 3/4 × 5 × 10 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Egypt
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Africa
- Credit line
- Gift of Phoenix Ancient Art, S.A.
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Divine images, powerful symbols, and sacred words placed in the burial chamber with the deceased helped ancient Egyptians transition from the earthly realm to the afterlife. This funerary statue, owned by a woman named Asetirdis (“Isis is the one who gave her”), depicts the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. A composite of Ptah (a creator god), Sokar (the patron deity of the necropolis west of Memphis), and Osiris (the ruler of the underworld), Ptah-Sokar-Osiris’s purview encompassed all phases of life, including rebirth. Shown in a mummified form, his red wrappings are covered in an intricate net of beads painted in blue, black, and yellow. A cavity in the statue’s base was designed to hold a papyrus scroll inscribed with funerary texts or another sacred object to facilitate Asetirdis’s rebirth after death.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
