Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Inlays from a Bed
Classic Kerma
Not on view
This object is not part of The Met collection. It was in the Museum for a special exhibition and has been returned to the lender.
These inlays are from the decayed footboard of a bed found at Kerma, the capital of a Nubian kingdom. The standing hippopotamus-like figure holding a knife is an Egyptian goddess of childbirth who, in this context, protected the vulnerable sleeper or dead. Ibex and hyena were not among the Egyptian repertoire of birth-related protective fauna, but they represent a distinctive Kerma imagery of power, rooted partly in the experience of animal life in ancient Sudan.
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