Going, Going, Gone: The Mysteries of Sotheby’s Unofficial Mascot

F or more than a century, a bust of Sekhmet has presided over the front entrance of Sotheby’s London. Carved from diorite around 1320 BCE, the lion-headed goddess predates the building, the firm and the market she oversees. A quiet fixture of New Bond Street, the sculpture has long been Sotheby’s unofficial mascot.

Though often overlooked by shoppers, the effigy has earned mention in volumes by art-world figures from Charles Saatchi to Simon de Pury as one of the capital’s cultural talismans. She is believed to have been offered in June 1822 as part of the collection of the early Egyptian explorer and excavator Giovanni Belzoni.

Some accounts suggest the bust sold but was never collected, while others hold that it failed to find a buyer and was abandoned by its consignor. What is known is that the orphaned object was adopted by staff and traveled with them when Sotheby’s moved premises in 1917 from Wellington Street, off the Strand, to New Bond Street.

In 1966, Bruce Chatwin—then a cataloger, years before becoming one of Britain’s most influential writers—wrote about the sculpture in what would be his first published piece. By then, its uncertain status was already part of the story.

Likely one of about 600 statues of the goddess that once surrounded the Temple of Mut at Karnak, near Luxor, the bust was never intended to be unique. In London, Sekhmet became precisely that—the city’s oldest outdoor statue. Arguably, Sotheby’s most enduring lot remains the one that never left the block.