Design Amulet with a Hippopotamus (? ) Head on the Back Pierced for Stringing, and a Left-facing Monkey as the Device

Design amulets from the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, also called button seals or figure seals according to their form, were at least in some instances used as seals. They seem overwhelmingly, however, to show devices (base decoration) and combinations of figural backs and base decoration that are clearly amuletic in nature; moreover, at least at Qau, they came mainly from the burials of women and children. Examples are preserved from tombs where they were buried with the dead, sometimes incorporated in strings of beads and amulets.

A recent study has cast considerable light on the motifs and their amuletic significance. Hippopotamus heads were probably the most popular and earliest of the figural forms to appear on the backs of the design amulets.Age-old symbolic figures, they are regeneration symbols in the Middle Kingdom, and probably already here. The monkey on be base, often an attendant on the course of the sun's travels, likewise has a place here as a regenerative figure.