I’m Catherine Roehrig. I’m a curator here at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Department of Egyptian Art, and I’d like to tell you about this little figure, which, at first appearance, seems to be a very ‘cute’ little piece. But to an ancient Egyptian, the hippopotamus is a very dangerous animal. When they feel threatened, they will attack, and if you look into his face, you will see his eyes are not happy; he’s a very dangerous-looking little creature.

For the Egyptians, their entire view of the world is that it is split into chaos and order. In this particular case, we have a little hippo who has been put in a tomb and in order to keep the person safe from the aggressive side of the hippo, three of his legs were broken off so he couldn’t actually attack you. The front left leg, the one that’s stepping forward, is original; but you can see all the others are a slightly different color and that’s because they’ve been restored, and we want you to be able to see that they’ve been restored.

On the other hand, he has been decorated with lilies, and to the Egyptian, the lotus or the lily was a very powerful symbol of rejuvenation because, of course, it opens in the sun, it closes at night, it opens in the daytime again. And so, because also, the color blue, the color of water, is a rejuvenating thing, the animal has both this very benign side as a symbol of rejuvenation, but you’ve got to make sure he’s not going to hurt you, so you break off his legs.