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Walters Art Museum (Egyptian) · jewelry

Scarab with King as Bull Motif

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

Description

<p>In addition to its original function as a personal seal, the scarab became one of the most powerful amulets, used by the living and entombed with the dead. Countless variations have been preserved, differing in design, size, and material, but always associated with eternity and regeneration. This scarab has a very special bottom design displaying the king as a bull trampling over a prone enemy, with the script sign of a hoe in front of the bull's head. A Horus hawk wearing the double-crown (of Upper and Lower Egypt) is displayed in front of the bull, and the cartouche with the throne-name of the king is above his back. Such an amulet should secure the divine, victorious power of the king, as well as royal authority. It provides its owner with royal patronage and protection.</p><p>For the latest information about this object, <cite><a href='https://purl.thewalters.org/art/42.76' rel='external'>Scarab with King as Bull Motif</a></cite>, visit the Online Collection of the Walters Art Museum.</p>

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.

Green-blue glazed steatite scarab depicting a bull-like motif around a central figure.

The image shows an oval, molded scarab/cylinder-seal style amulet with a recessed border. The surface is covered in a beige/cream body tone with chipped areas and an overall green-blue glaze accenting raised designs. A rectangular panel at the top contains what appears to be incised or painted signs that could be hieroglyphic, though the individual characters are not fully legible at this resolution. The central field includes a stylized bull motif: on the right a tall, legged form with a long tail and raised head/neck is rendered in green-blue, while on the left and lower areas are smaller molded elements and diagonal strokes that likely complete the bull/ground pattern. The lower left shows a cluster of darkened lines and possibly the ground line or additional decorative motifs, but details are unclear.

decorative unclear fragmentary
Materials steatite (body/core)green-blue glaze
Signs rectangular cartouche-like or sign panel (hieroglyphic/inscription unknown)
Visible text "Unclear; a rectangular sign panel is visible at the top but individual hieroglyphs cannot be reliably read."

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1

English description

[Translation] Men-Kheper-Re; / beloved of Horus.

Connections

Deities Horus

Cross-references (2)

  • Walters-AccNum 42.76 tier-2
  • Walters-id 17078 tier-2

Similar inscriptions · by content embedding

About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Walters Art Museum (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.