The goddess takes her usual form of a pregnant hippopotamus with other human and animal attributes such as the cow-ears of Hathor, the breasts of a woman and the fanged jaws of a crocodile. A thick straited mane hangs at the rear as a scutiform mass. She wears a striped tripartite wig with a plain modius (a low coronet-like feature) above. Before her, supported by her left hand, is a sa-amulet, signifying ‘protection’, combined with a tyet, a symbolic knot associated with Isis. With her right hand she cups her right breast, the nipple of which has a hole penetrating to the hollow interior of the vessel.

Vessels with mammiform protuberances, supposedly representing the goddess Hathor, exist from earlier times. The style of this piece and its rather gritty glaze, as well as the design of the composite sa-amulet, does not suggest the late or Roman Periods, and the object is here tentatively ascribed to the Ramesside period, the era covered by Dynasties XIX – XX (c. 1293 – 1070 BC).

The surface of the blue-green faience is somewhat granular. He glaze has run around the edges of the hole in the right breast, showing that this is an original orifice and has not been drilled in recent times. The condition of the vessel is good apart from the chip in the lower right-hand edge of the podium.