Ostracon Depicting the God Sobek

Surrounded by symbols of fecundity, the god Sobek wears over his divine wig a tall, plumed head ornament adorned with a sun disk and twisted ram horns. A schematic broad collar rests around his neck, while a checkered corselet and a kilt adorn his body. He clutches an ankh in one hand and, in the other, a was scepter decorated with a bouquet of water lilies (often described in Egyptology as "lotuses"). Behind him, a palm frond extends above his height and curves toward him.

The color red was often used in such ostraca for preliminary drawings. In this example, the head ornament, palm, lotus flowers, and Sobek’s figure were drawn in black ink over red, while the checkered patterns on the corselet, in contrast, were drawn directly in black. In other parts of the drawing, red was used to paint the crocodile’s face and body and to delineate the pleats of his kilt. An ostracon now housed in the Institute of History and Art, Albany, shows a similar scene, rendered exclusively in black. In that depiction, the god appears within a kiosk topped with a cavetto cornice but with only a was scepter.

Both ostraca described above are stylistically similar to examples found at Deir el-Medina and the Valley of the Kings, where Sobek is also attested. Egyptologist Bernard Bruyere reported finding a flint figure of a crocodile in one of the houses at Deir el-Medina, and ostraca painted with crocodiles were unearthed in the workmen’s huts and the village. The exact importance of Sobek at Deir el-Medina is debatable, however, because when his image bears epithets they often refer to sites outside the Theban region, such as the Upper Egyptian town of Sumenu. This site housed a temple dedicated to Sobek, where several stelae depicting him with tree branches and palm fronds were discovered.