It is hard to imagine now, but in far ancient times, the Sahara desert was more like the Savannah of Southern Africa – a wide-stretching grassland populated with animals now associated with the Serengeti. In the Predynastic Period, Egyptians were still used to seeing many of these animals, which gradually retreated south from 4200 BC. Indeed, many such creatures, including elephants, ostriches and antelopes, are represented in the earliest Egyptian art. This figure of an unknown quadruped seems to share many features with a rhinoceros: a large, round body; thick stocky legs; and a large head pointed downwards with protrusions which may represent ears and a horn. A slight bump on the hind parts of the figure may represent a tail.

If indeed this figure is a rhinoceros, then it represents a creature not seen in Egypt for six thousand years. In fact, it may well depict one of the last rhinoceroses in North Africa. Rhinoceros representations are rare even in Predynastic Egypt, and are mostly confined to petroglyphs of rhino hunting scenes from the Western Desert. This, then, would be a very rare example of a figurative depiction of a rhinoceros from Egypt.

Small figures of animals from Egypt are commonly considered votive offerings. This is especially true of animals who lived at the fringes of Egypt’s territory, and were therefore gatekeepers to the world of the unknown. Animals were considered able to transfer between the realms of human and god, sometimes acting as messengers. We can only imagine what the Egyptians made of the disappearance of this strange creature from their world across the course of the Fifth Millennium BC; thereafter, rhinoceroses were exotic animals only encountered on Pharaoh’s irregular trading expeditions to sub-Saharan Africa.