A Seventeenth-Century Ivory Figure in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden

JAN SMITS professor of theology and Hebrew at Groningen University in the Netherlands, published a selection of his theological studies under the title Selecta Sacra. One of these studies, De planctu ob Thammuz, was an extensive treatise on the ancient Hebrew god Tammuz, whom he considered to be the predecessor of the patriarch Joseph. In this treatise Braun developed the thesis that Tammuz could be equated with the Egyptian god Osiris, whose wife (who was also his sister) Isis was sometimes depicted with a bushel container and suckling her son Horus at her large breasts (Smits 1988). He therefore identified a Yoruba-like ivory statue of a kneeling woman with massive breasts and a bushel container on her head as

Art · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · History

• Ivory as Cultural Document

  Open Access•Kathy Curnow•Curator The Museum Journal•2018

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