Bust of Sekhmet

Late Period ca. 664–332 B.C.

Provenance : Bouvier Collection, Alexandria 1950

Statue represents the goddess Sekhmet, "the powerful," with a woman's body and a lion's head. Her ambivalent appearance well expresses the double nature and changeable temperament of the goddess, who can be savage and redoubtable in anger, but also acts as protectress of Egypt and its pharaoh when appeased