AN EGYPTIAN SILVER PTAH LATE PERIOD, 664-332 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN SILVER PTAH, LATE PERIOD, 664-332 B.C. Cast in the round and standing on a small rectangular plinth, the god is shown in his characteristic mummiform pose, the body sheathed in a tight wrapping from which only the head and hands emerge. The shaven cranium is smoothly modelled, the face broad with almond eyes set beneath low brows, the mouth lifted in a faint smile and framed by a narrow straight beard descending to the chest. A broad usekh collar of multiple registers spans the shoulders, its incised lines still crisp. The hands, brought together at the breast, grasp a composite was-djed-ankh sceptre that descends in a single shaft along the front of the figure, terminating just above the feet. The plinth is plain and square in section. The silver retains a warm lustre across the high points, with darker tonalities settled into the recesses of the collar and along the line of the sceptre. The figure represents Ptah, the creator god of Memphis, patron of craftsmen and metalworkers, shown in the iconographic form fixed for him from the New Kingdom onward. The compressed body, the close-fitting wrap, the straight divine beard, and above all the composite sceptre uniting the was (dominion), the djed (stability and the spine of Osiris) and the ankh (life) identify the subject without ambiguity. The sceptre's three elements together summarise Ptah's role as the god through whose thought and word the ordered world was held in being, and through whose patronage the craftsman's hand gave that order material form. The choice of silver carries particular weight in an Egyptian context. Silver was not native to the Nile Valley and had to be imported, principally from the Aegean and the Levant; through much of the Pharaonic period it was valued above gold, and in religious texts the bones of the gods are described as being of silver while their flesh was of gold. A votive figure of Ptah cast in this metal was therefore an offering of conspicuous expense, almost certainly commissioned for a temple deposit or for the private chapel of a wealthy devotee rather than for ordinary domestic piety. The metal's association with the divine body would have made it a peculiarly fitting medium in which to render the creator god himself, the more so given Ptah's identity as the patron of those who worked precious materials. Small-scale precious-metal images of this kind belong to the broader expansion of temple votive production in the Late Period, when bronze, and more sparingly silver and gold, were used for figures dedicated by individuals seeking the god's favour or commemorating a vow fulfilled. Surviving silver examples are markedly fewer than their bronze counterparts, both because of the cost of the material and because they were vulnerable to later melting. This figure exemplifies the Late Period votive tradition at its most considered, where the canonical iconography of a Memphite creator god is rendered in the metal most closely associated with the substance of the divine. It is the conjunction of subject and material, Ptah and silver, that gives the object its specific character within the wider corpus of Late Period bronzes. Height: 6.8cm

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