Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) · statue

Statuette of Imhotep

Source of record: Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Imhotep was the architect who designed the Stepped Pyramid of King Djoser (Dynasty 3, c.2687 BCE). Fifteen hundred years later, Imhotep was deified and revered as a god of healing and wisdom. As a sign of his learning, he holds an unrolled papyrus on his lap.

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.

Bronze/copper-alloy standing statuette of a male figure with a shaved head and hands held low over a cloth-wrapped belt.

The image shows a full-length, standing ancient Egyptian-style statuette on a base. The figure has a bald/shaved head, simplified facial features with inlaid/indicated eyes, and a bare torso. One arm appears to rest over the other at the lower abdomen where a patterned, belt-like garment is held or gathered. The lower legs end in a stylized kilt. Faint incised or painted marks are visible on the belt/kilt area, and a central rectangular area on the front of the lower kilt may relate to decoration; however no readable hieroglyphs are clearly legible at this resolution. No cartouche, royal name, or explicit textual inscription is clearly identifiable. No Greek/Coptic/Arabic text is visible.

royal unclear (likely Late Period/Ptolemaic- or earlier traditional Egyptian small bronzes, but not determinable from the image alone) good
Materials copper alloymetal patina (green/black)

Connections

Deities Imhotep
Royals Djoser

Cross-references (1)

  • ARTIC-id 120293 tier-2
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian).
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.