Because the writing of hieroglyphs was considered a sacred act, ancient Egyptians believed that Thoth, the Egyptian god of intelligence and writing, presided over the scribes. Thoth was represented as either an ibis or a baboon. Ibis are wading birds distinguished by their long, slender, downward-curving bills, and ibis were frequently mummified and offered to Thoth as a gift of prayer. More than four million mummified ibis have been discovered in Egypt; tens of thousands were found in the ibis catacombs at Saqqara, an ancient necropolis just south of Cairo and west of the ancient city of Memphis.
This ibis image was probably attached to a staff in order to create a standard (a type of banner) that would have been carried by priests or government officials in religious processions or parades. Very few examples of processional standards survive, although their importance in public processions is demonstrated in illustrations on Egyptian monuments and sculpture. This standard dates to the Late Period (712 - 332 BC). Although the standard seems flat, it was designed as a three-dimensional object. The skill of the artist who created this bronze is evident in the elegance of the outline and contour and the attention to detail. Late Period bronze production reached its peak during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664 - 525 BC), a likely date for this object.
In ancient Egypt, the gods had specific roles in the journey of the dead to the afterlife, just as symbols of the gods had a role in the ceremonies and rituals of the living. On the side of the sarcophagus on display in our Egyptian gallery, Thoth is shown with Anubis in the Weighing of the Heart, a scene from the Book of the Dead. Egyptians believed that many gods bore animal traits, so gods were often represented either as animals or as part animal, part human. (Gods that were feared or held in awe, for example, could be represented by lions, crocodiles, or venomous snakes.) Anubis is the jackal-headed god who tends the mummy as an embalmer and who tests the balance of the deceased's heart; Thoth (frequently depicted as either an ibis or a human with an ibis head on funerary papyri, tomb walls, and sarcophagi) records the results of the final judgment of the deceased.
