In clearing the temple of Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty, the Egypt Exploration Fund discovered large numbers of votive offerings placed as prayers or thanks to the goddess Hathor. The majority of these offerings seem to have been made by women, and were probably intended to guarantee fertility and safe birth. This white-painted clay head shows the goddess as a cow with sun-disc between her horns, and is typical of the votives, made by hand, and adopting the iconography of formal royal art but produced outside the royal or temple workshops of trained artists.
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