Provenance Information

Purchased from Lucien Viola of the Galerie l'Ibis, who acquired the piece with many others from the Egyptian antiquities inventory of Ernst Kofler. Kofler was a dealer, prinicpally of Egyptian art in the 1950's and 1960's, that Viola had known for many years in Cairo. Documentation dating to 1989 from Kofler states that he had owned for 20 years the group of antiquities, of which the hippo goddess was one, consigned to Viola for sale in 1987.

Exhibition Information

This work was exhibited in connection with the 2014 Brussels Ancient Art Fair

Publication Information

Christies London sale catalogue, April 12, 2000, lot 79, “A Rare Limestone Upper Part of a Statue of Taweret (Tueris).” The work was published (with photograph) in connection with the 2014 Brussels Ancient Art Fair. The work was also published as the signature image for the Galerie L’Ibis online catalog in 2014 and 2015.

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970

Informed judgement that works were outside of the country of modern discovery before 1970

Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has provenance information back to the early 1960s that is supported by circumstantial evidence. Ernst Kofler was a Swiss dealer who acquired works in Egypt through his friend, Maguid Sameda, in the 1950s and 1960s. After Mr. Sameda died in the late 1960s, Mr. Kofler stopped collecting Egyptian objects. In 1987, Lucien Viola met and later married Mr. Kofler’s granddaughter. Mr. Kofler transferred Egyptian objects, including this statuette, to Mr. Viola for sale during the late 1980’s. Mr. Kofler signed a certification dated February 25, 1983, declaring that all of the Egyptian reliefs and statues he gave to Mr. Viola for sale had been with Mr. Kofler “for over 20 years in Lausanne, Switzerland.” In 1987, this work was listed in a shipping invoice before its transfer from Mr. Kofler to Mr. Viola Currently this statue is understood to be the earliest known three dimensional representation of a composite deity, a concept that was quintessentially Egyptian for its pantheon. This rare statue depicts an early hippo goddess where human, hippopotamus, crocodile and feline characteristics are combined into a single deity.