From time to time, many museums create small exhibitions, trails, or blog posts, by asking all their staff to write a short piece about their favourite object. They usually call these “Curator’s Choice”. I have been thinking about some of my own favourite objects from the historical and archaeological world all over the planet. This little statuette of a frog is one of them. You might call this a “Curator's Choice" – look out for more!

I have never seen the actual object myself, and I don’t expect I ever will. Nevertheless, from the three images I have seen, it is one of my favourite pieces of art. It has the complete simplicity I like so much, and makes excellent use of the natural colouring of the stone it is carved from. Also I happen to be fond of frogs.

It is a religious object from around the turn of the 3^rd millennium BCE, i.e. during the Predynastic period in Egypt. The frog was an ancient symbol of fertility, relating to the annual flooding of the Nile which allowed the crops to grow, and which naturally encouraged the breeding of millions of frogs in its mud. It was later known to have been associated with rebirth and life after death, with childbirth and with the fertility goddess Heket or Heqet, who was identified with the goddess Hathor. Heqet was the wife of Khnum, the potter-god who shaped human beings on his wheel. She was sometimes represented as a woman with the head of a frog; sometimes as a frog.

This statuette has no provenance, i.e.no-one knows where it was found. It is made of travertine/alabaster and is 154mm tall. The clever use of the stone’s natural veining was probably intentional, as it was not intended to be painted.

It is now in the Cleveland Museum of Art.