Baboon
Description
Object Label: Baboons warm their stomachs by sitting up, raising their paws, and facing the sun each morning, a behavior the Egyptians interpreted as solar worship. Baboon figures were included in burials to assist in the deceased’s rebirth. Wild baboons had all but disappeared from around the Nile Valley by the Middle Kingdom, when this figure was made. Female baboons were placid enough to be domesticated and kept as pets, but they had to be imported at great cost from central Africa, making them exotic luxuries and conspicuous status symbols. Caption: Baboon, ca. 1938–1700 B.C.E.. Faience, 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. (6.4 x 3.8 x 4.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 59.199.3.
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.
Small faience figure of a baboon shown in three-quarter view, seated with one arm/paw raised toward its body.
The object is a compact, hand-sized faience animal figurine shaped as a baboon. The baboon is seated on a flat base/seat and angled slightly to the viewer’s left. Its head is rounded with a protruding muzzle; ears are simplified and molded. One forelimb (on the viewer’s right) is held close to the torso, while the other is bent inward, creating a gathered, seated pose. The surface appears mottled, consistent with fired-glaze/stoneware with dark speckling or discoloration. No hieroglyphs, cartouches, or textual inscriptions are visible on the visible surfaces in this image. No identifiable royal name or deity attributes are clearly legible.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 59.199.3 tier-2
- BKM-Object 3678 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- 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.