AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE FIGURE OF BASTET LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXVI-XXX, CIRCA 664-332 B.C.

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AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE FIGURE OF BASTET, LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXVI-XXX, CIRCA 664-332 B.C. Modelled in the round and standing on an integral rectangular plinth, the goddess is shown striding with the left leg advanced, her body sheathed in a close-fitting long garment that falls to the ankles. The feline head is turned frontally, with rounded ears set high, prominent muzzle, and traces of incised detail across the ruff. Above the head rises a superstructure, now abraded but identifiable as a crowning attribute. The arms are held close to the body, the right lowered along the flank and the left bent across the chest, the hands closed around emblems now indistinct through surface loss. The turquoise-green glaze survives across much of the surface, with areas of buff-coloured earthen deposit and cracquelure consistent with long burial. The subject is Bastet in her later anthropomorphic form, in which the goddess is shown as a woman with the head of a lioness or domestic cat. By the Late Period the lioness-headed and cat-headed types had partly converged, and the small votive and amuletic figures produced in faience in enormous numbers during Dynasties XXVI to XXX show the goddess standing in this hieratic pose, typically holding an aegis or sistrum against the chest and, in some examples, a small basket at the side. The traces of a raised attribute on the crown of the head are consistent with the uraeus or sun-disk sometimes worn by Bastet in her solar aspect, associating her with the daughter of Ra and with the pacified form of the dangerous lioness Sekhmet. Faience is not incidental to the meaning of this class of object. The Egyptian glazed composition known as tjehenet, of powdered quartz fused with alkaline and copper-bearing colourants, produced the luminous blue-green surface that Egyptian religious thought associated with regeneration, with the waters of the inundation, and with the plant life of the marshes. It was the preferred medium for votive and amuletic sculpture precisely because its colour carried theological weight. A faience Bastet was not merely an inexpensive substitute for bronze; the material itself declared the deity's regenerative and protective power. The manufacture of such figures at scale, particularly around the great sanctuary of Bastet at Bubastis in the eastern Delta, corresponds to the intensification of her cult under the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, when the annual festival at Bubastis drew pilgrims from across Egypt and when small faience images of the goddess were deposited as offerings in vast quantities. Bastet occupied a complex position within the Egyptian pantheon. Originally a lioness deity of the Delta, she was gradually assimilated to the domestic cat from the New Kingdom onward, and by the first millennium she stood for the benign, protective, and fertile aspect of the feline goddesses, in contrast to the ferocious Sekhmet of Memphis. Her role as protector of the household, of women in childbirth, and of the king in his solar aspect made her one of the most widely venerated of the Late Period deities, and figures of this type were used both as personal amulets and as temple offerings. This figure exemplifies the standardised Late Period type of standing anthropomorphic Bastet in glazed composition, produced in the temple workshops of the Delta for votive dedication. The strong turquoise glaze and the confident modelling of the striding stance and feline head place it within the mainstream of Twenty-Sixth to Thirtieth Dynasty faience production, when the goddess's cult and her small-scale sculptural image reached their widest diffusion. Dimensions: Height: 8.4cm

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