This faience hippopotamus statuette was found in Dra’ Abu el-Naga’ in western Thebes. The glossy blue glaze is the color of the Nile, where the animal lived, and the decoration shows various representations of fauna and flora that grew by the river. The flowers, papyrus plants, and perching bird, are depicted in black, linear forms. Such animal figurines were popular in tombs of the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period.
The hippopotamus was associated with the fertility of the Nile mud or silt. The hippopotamus goddess Taweret was, moreover, a protector goddess of women and newly born children. Figurines of her were used as amulets to drive away danger.
An emblem of goddess, the hippopotamus conversely significant evil at other times. The animal appears in Nile hunting scenes on mastaba tomb walls of the Old Kingdom period as hunting was a pursuit of noble people. At the same time, the scene symbolized the victory of right and order over chaos and disorder.
Made of Egyptian faience. Middle Kingdom, 11th Dynasty, ca. 2134-1991 BC. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 21365
On this day, 11 November 1948, wildcat striking brewery workers in New York City won their month-long walkout. A mass meeting of the remaining 3000 strikers (5 small breweries had already agreed to the demands) agreed to end their strike at midnight that night and return to work the following day, after the remainder of the brewers agreed the workers’ demand to scrap excessively short drivers’ schedules which gave them insufficient time to load and unload their vehicles. Bosses were also forced to drop their multi-million dollar lawsuits against the United Brewery Workers’ union, who in any case had denounced the walkout and tried to order, then manipulate the strikers back to work. Edward Hughlett, a union official who tried to address the meeting was booed so loudly he was forced to surrender the microphone twice, and the New York Times reported that the “hostility toward the international union official took on such menacing proportions that six uniformed patrolmen rushed out of a side room to protect him”.
Pictured: workers at the Schaefer Brewery following another strike the following year https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1261093200742494/?type=3
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