AN EGYPTIAN LAPIS LAZULI AMULET OF RE-HORAKHTY PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 304-30 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN LAPIS LAZULI AMULET OF RE-HORAKHTY, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 304-30 B.C. Of upright rectangular form on a flat plinth base, carved in openwork from a single block of deep blue lapis lazuli flecked with golden pyrite inclusions. The composition presents a falcon-headed figure in profile facing right, the head finely worked with a prominent eye and curved beak, surmounted by an elaborate composite crown comprising a sun disc flanked by tall double plumes and laterally projecting ram's horns terminating in upturned volutes. The body is rendered as a stylised mummiform or feathered torso with broad collar of horizontal registers across the chest, descending into a diamond-latticed lower section that suggests a feathered or scaled garment. The figure holds before him a tall ankh, pierced through the loop, its arms and shaft set against the body. A papyrus or lotus stalk rises along the proper left side of the composition, terminating in a stylised umbel. The reverse and edges retain a matte polish, with earthen encrustation lodged in the deeper recesses of the carving. The iconography combines the principal attributes of the solar deity Re-Horakhty, "Horus of the Two Horizons", in whom the falcon-god Horus is fused with the sun god Re. The falcon head identifies the Horus aspect; the sun disc above the head, here enclosed within the horns and plumes of the so-called hemhem or composite atef crown, declares the solar identity. The ankh held forward signifies the gift of life that the deity bestows on the wearer, and the plant stalk at the side completes the formula of regeneration and divine protection. Worn in life or placed within the wrappings of the dead, an amulet of this subject extended the protective and vivifying power of the rising sun to its owner. The choice of lapis lazuli is itself part of the amulet's meaning. The stone was not native to Egypt and was imported overland at considerable expense from the mines of Badakhshan in present-day Afghanistan, a supply line active from the third millennium B.C. onward. Its deep night-sky blue was associated in Egyptian thought with the hair of the gods, with the heavens, and with the regenerative waters, and its use was restricted in practice to objects of high status, temple equipment, royal jewellery, and amulets intended for elite burial. By the Ptolemaic period, the iconographic vocabulary of pharaonic Egypt had been absorbed into a Hellenised court culture that continued to commission cult and funerary objects in the old manner, often with a heightened density of attributes and a love of composite crowns of the type seen here. This amulet exemplifies the late survival and elaboration of solar-Horus iconography in hardstone in Ptolemaic Egypt, where the consolidation of multiple divine attributes into a single dense composition, carved in the most prestigious of imported materials, served both a devotional and a status-bearing function. The openwork treatment, the composite crown, and the use of lapis together place it within the small body of high-quality stone amulets produced for elite owners in the final centuries of pharaonic religious practice. Height: 6.9cm

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