Statuette of Sekhmet. Ancient Egypt, Lower Epoch, 722-332 B.C.

Statuette of Sekhmet. Ancient Egypt, Lower Epoch, 722-332 BC.
Bronze.
With export permit.
Good general state of preservation: archaeological patina, small losses and erosions consistent with age.
Mounted on modern pedestal.
Measurements: 19 x 4 x 8 cm.

Egyptian bronze statuette representing Sekhmet, one of the most powerful divinities of the pharaonic pantheon, associated with war, the destructive force of the sun and, at the same time, protection and healing. The goddess appears seated in a frontal and hieratic attitude, with a female body, lioness head and solar disk on her head, essential attributes of her iconography.

The piece responds to a votive typology widely spread during the Low Period, a period in which small bronze images dedicated to temples and sanctuaries proliferated. Their function was not merely decorative: these figures acted as devotional offerings and as symbolic supports of the divine presence, linked to requests for protection, health and appeasement of the destructive forces of the goddess.

Despite its reduced format, the statuette retains a remarkable ritual intensity. The frontality, the seated posture and the clarity of the attributes transmit the permanence of the Egyptian canon, based on stability, symmetry and the symbolic efficacy of the sacred image. The green and reddish patina of the bronze, together with the irregularities and surface wear, reinforce its archaeological character and material authenticity.

Similar statuettes of Sekhmet are preserved in important international collections, such as the British Museum, the Louvre and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, reflecting the extraordinary diffusion and continuity of the cult of the goddess in the last centuries of Pharaonic Egypt.