Skip Navigation

Princess Sobeknakht Suckling a Prince

Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art

On View: Old Kingdom to 18th Dynasty, Egyptian Galleries, 3rd Floor

Beginning in the Middle Kingdom, craftsmen demonstrated great skill in designing and manufacturing metal statuary. This copper statuette, representing a woman suckling a male child, is considered among the finest of these sculptures. The inscription on the base identifies the subject as the "hereditary noblewoman" Sobeknakht; her fillet and uraeus-cobra show that she is a princess. The figure may have been commissioned to celebrate the birth of a prince, to signal a reigning king's devotion to his mother, or to reflect Sobeknakht's wish for divine help in conceiving a child who would become Egypt's king.

MEDIUM Copper alloy
  • Place Made: Egypt
  • DATES ca. 1700–after 1630 B.C.E.
    DYNASTY Dynasty 13
    PERIOD Middle Kingdom to Second Intermediate Period
    DIMENSIONS 4 x 2 3/4 x 3 1/4 in. (10.2 x 7 x 8.3 cm)  (show scale)
    ACCESSION NUMBER 43.137
    CREDIT LINE Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
    PROVENANCE Archaeological provenance not yet documented; by 1911, acquired by Octave Borelli Bey of Egypt and France; between 1911 and 1927, provenance not yet documented; by 1927, acquired by Alphonse Kann of Paris, France; January 6, 1927, purchased at American Art Galleries, “The Alphonse Kann collection”, lot 54 by the Brummer Gallery, New York, NY; August 18, 1943, purchased from the Brummer Gallery (N1153) by the Brooklyn Museum.
    Provenance FAQ
    CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION Copper figurine of seated woman suckling child. The woman clad in a short garment sits on the ground with the left knee raised and the right leg folded under her with foot protruding from in back of the left ankle. She holds a nude child to the right breast. The base consists of a thin, bronze placque, on the front of which is scratched an inscription, which seems to read: AbC. T’t s’bk-nht m 3 ‘t-h2w “the Princess Sebek-nakht, the justified.” Condition: Tip of nose slightly rubbed.
    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is on view in Old Kingdom to 18th Dynasty, Egyptian Galleries, 3rd Floor
    CAPTION Princess Sobeknakht Suckling a Prince, ca. 1700–after 1630 B.C.E. Copper alloy, 4 x 2 3/4 x 3 1/4 in. (10.2 x 7 x 8.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 43.137. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 43.137_SL1.jpg)
    IMAGE overall, 43.137_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
    "CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
    RIGHTS STATEMENT Creative Commons-BY
    You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
    RECORD COMPLETENESS
    Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.