猫的头 - 美国大都会艺术博物馆展品查阅

品名（中）	猫的头
品名（英）	Head of a cat
入馆年号	1977年，1977.260
策展部门	埃及艺术（Egyptian Art）
创作者
创作年份	公元前 664
创作地区	来自于: 埃及（From: Egypt）
分类
尺寸	高 10.9 厘米 (4 5/16 英寸); 宽 9.2 厘米 (3 5/8 英寸); 深 8.6 厘米 (3 3/8 英寸)
介绍（中）	这只猫是女神巴斯特的神圣之物，被献在圣所中，并存放在埃及各地的动物墓穴中。这只猫有深切的眼睛，以添加镶嵌物和细小的切割线条，标记耳朵和胡须上的一簇毛发。从雕像破碎的方式来看，很难知道这件作品是单独制作的猫头，还是坐着的猫的连续铜铸碎片。然而，它在大小和形状上与04.2.589等数字相当，这表明它被设计为一个单独的铸造头。这些大猫头的功能是模棱两可的。它们是在提供上下文中发现的，通常认为它们构成了复合小雕像的一部分;完整的小雕像，如果完好无损，可能会有一个空心的木头身体，里面有一个猫木乃伊，就像类似的大型空心铜合金小雕像一样。然而，这些数字几乎从未在复合材料尸体中发现，即使在木材保存相对完好的地方也是如此。在某些情况下，这些猫头可能是自己专用的，或者被故意从它们的身体上拆下来，然后被丢弃或以其他方式使用。
介绍（英）	The cat was sacred to the goddess Bastet, and was offered in sanctuaries and deposited in animal necropoleis throughout Egypt. This cat has deep-cut eyes for the addition of inlay and fine, incised lines marking the tufts of hair on the ears and the whiskers. From the way the figure is broken, it is hard to know if this piece was a separately crafted cat head or was a fragment from one continuous cupreous casting of a seated cat. It is comparable in size and shape, however, to figures such as 04.2.589, which suggests that it was designed as a separately cast head. The function of these large cat heads is ambiguous. They have been found in offering contexts, and it is commonly assumed that they formed part of a composite statuette; the full statuette, when intact, probably would have had a hollow wooden body and held a cat mummy inside, much as similar large hollow copper alloy statuettes did. However, these figures are almost never found with the composite bodies, even at sites where wood is relatively well preserved. It is possible that in some cases these cat heads were dedicated on their own, or were purposefully disassembled from their bodies, which were then discarded or used in another way.