Head and Shoulder Statue of a Vulture, Likely the Goddess Nekhbet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2026

On loan to The Met


Title: Head and shoulder from a statue of a vulture

Period: Napatan Period

Date: ca. 690–664 BCE

Medium: Granite gneiss

Dimensions: 41.5 × 27 × 50 cm, 49 kg (16 5/16 × 10 5/8 × 19 11/16 in., 108 lb.)

Other (Head): 10 1/4 in. (26 cm)

Credit Line: The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Allocated by the Oxford Expedition to Nubia from excavations at Sanam Abu Dom, 1922.

Object No.: DE.113

This fragment probably depicts the goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhbet, in her vulture manifestation. The presence of Nekhbet and her Lower Egyptian counterpart Wadjet (likely represented in the adjacent cobra statue fragment) reinforced a king’s divine right to rule. Although both deities are Egyptian, aspects of the fragments suggest that they come from statues made in Nubia. Napatan rulers used gneiss for state-commissioned art, and details of the vulture—in particular the thick beak, heavy neck ridge, and broad collar—have no parallel in known Egyptian depictions of Nekhbet.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/divine-egypt/exhibition-objects