In ancient Egypt the word for faience, the vibrant blue-green material of this statuette, was tjehnet and meant something which is brilliant and scintillating, like the light of the sun, moon and stars. Just as these heavenly bodies shimmer by day or night, so too faience glistens with a light that in Egyptian thought was symbolic for life, rebirth and immortality. This figure of a lion-headed goddess would once have radiated from the shadows of a sacred enclosure, most likely to honor Sakhmet, an aggressive form of the fecund goddess Hathor who was also known as the 'Mistress of Faience.' Bastet, also represented with a cat's head, was associated with the moon and in myth becomes the eye of the moon.