Hippopotamus (332 BCE–395 CE): Art, History and Details

Hippopotamus (332 BCE–395 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This hippopotamus steps forward with its rear left leg lifted off the ground and its head arched upwards. The hippopotamus was a Nilotic animal associated with Egypt and the Nile River that was brought to Rome and put on display in the Colosseum as part of venationes, or wild beast hunts. The rise of “Egyptomania” in the Roman Empire surged under the emperor Hadrian (reigned AD 117–38). Extant Egyptian examples of hippopotamus figurines are less animated and made of materials such as stone or pottery rather than bronze, making the pose and materiality of this object distinctly Greco-Roman.

Object facts

• Title: Hippopotamus
• Date: 332 BCE–395 CE
• Culture: Italy, Rome, Greco-Roman Period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze, solid cast
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.2 cm (2 7/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1958.100

A detail from the museum

The word hippopotamus is a Greek compound word combining “horse” (hippos) and “river” (potamos).

Collection credit

Bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kozloff, Arielle P. "A River Horse of a Different Empire or What are Hippopotami Doing on the Banks of the Tiber?" in Arthur Houghton et al., eds., Studies in Honor of Leo Mildenberg: Numismatics, Art Provenance, Archaeology (Wetteren, Belgium: Cultura Press, 1984), pp. 155-64, pl. 23, 1-3
• Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.