Thoth

Thoth, god of wisdom, learning, science, and medicine, was also a patron of art and scribes who recorded the judgment on the dead in the afterworld. Often the god is depicted with the head of a sacred ibis and body of a man ([1979.1](https://www.dma.org/object/artwork/3139698/)), but he also takes the form of a baboon, as seen here. When represented as a baboon, he symbolized those creatures who rose early with the sun, and was therefore held to be connected to the sun god Ra. Baboons were a feature in early Egyptian festivals (5300-3000 BC); they later became important to the Early Dynastic Kings of Horus (3000-2686 BC). The Egyptians associated Thoth with rebirth and the afterlife.

_Heather Bowling, Digital Collections Content Coordinator, 2016._

**Drawn from**

Fred S. Kleiner, ed, _Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History, Fourteenth edition_, (Wasworth Cenage Learning: Boston), 2013, 57.