LATE PERIOD, 26TH DYNASTY, 664-525 B.C.

This beautifully detailed hollow cast bronze Horus falcon wears an incised broad collar and the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt fronted by a uraeus and a projecting coil. The feathers are finely incised, and the well-modelled head has gold-inlaid eyes, a hooked beak and typical falcon facial markings. The underside has a sealed opening, which would have been used for the insertion of a mummy.

For a similar example see no. 99, p. 116 in Fazzini, Images for Eternity, Egyptian Art from Berkeley and Brooklyn. For a smaller falcon decorating a coffin see S. D'Auria et al., Mummies and Magic, The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1988, p. 236, no. 195. Horus, lord of the sky and the god of kingship, is among Egypt's oldest deities and the falcon soaring in the Egyptian sky embodied the god's qualities. In the Egyptian pantheon Horus was represented as a falcon or falcon-headed man. As heir to the divine kingship of Egypt, here he wears the royal uraeus and the double crown.
D'Auria op.cit., writes that "Falcon cults were scattered throughout Egypt, and Horus had many local cults. In the Late Period and Graeco-Roman periods, falcons were mummified by the thousands and buried in the sacred animal necropolis, sometimes with other birds or animals, at sites including Buto, Kom Ombo, Abydos, Sakkara, and Giza. The mummies, which were not always those of complete birds, were tightly wrapped and sometimes provided with cartonnage masks in the form of falcon's heads, or buried in coffins. In the Late Period, bronze boxes surmounted by figures of falcons were also used to house falcon mummies."