AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE AMULET DEPICTING A BABOON CARRYING A CROCADILE, NEW KINGDOM, DYNASTY XVIII, CIRC

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN TURQUOISE-GLAZED FAIENCE AMULET DEPICTING A BABOON CARRYING A CROCODILE, NEW KINGDOM, XVIIIth DYNASTY, CIRCA 1353-1336 B.C. Of small upright form, modelled in the round and rising from a rectangular base, the amulet depicts a squatting baboon shouldering a crocodile across its back. The primate is rendered with the pronounced dog-like muzzle, deep-set eye and thickly modelled shoulders characteristic of the hamadryas type, its ribcage and mane summarily incised down the flank. The crocodile is draped over the baboon's back with its jaws agape and forelimbs pendant along the animal's shoulder, the reptilian body reduced to a ridged, tapering mass following the curve of the baboon's spine. The whole is covered in a bright turquoise glaze pooling in the recesses to a deeper green, with slight surface pitting and light earthen accretions consistent with excavation. The subject belongs to a small and unusual group of Egyptian amulets in which the baboon appears in triumph over the crocodile, the primate holding, subduing or, as here, carrying the reptile. The baboon in New Kingdom religious thought was sacred to Thoth, god of writing, wisdom and lunar reckoning, and by extension a solar animal greeting the rising sun. The crocodile, though also divine in the cult of Sobek, could equally stand for chaotic and hostile forces threatening the ordered world. An amulet showing the baboon bearing the crocodile therefore reads as an apotropaic statement, the forces of wisdom and solar order prevailing over the untamed waters. Such compositions are rare within the wider corpus of faience amulets, most of which reduce the baboon to a seated attitude alone. The medium is significant. Egyptian faience, composed of a crushed quartz body coated in an alkaline glaze fired to a brilliant blue-green, carried associations far beyond its physical properties. Its colour was linked to the regenerative waters of the Nile, to fertility, and to rebirth, and the substance itself was understood as tjehnet, the "shining" or "dazzling" material of divine flesh. Amulets in this medium were accordingly deposited on the body of the deceased or worn in life for the protective and regenerative properties of the glaze itself, quite apart from the iconography they bore. The bright turquoise tone of the present piece is that most closely associated with high-quality XVIIIth Dynasty production. The dating supplied places this amulet within the Amarna horizon or its immediate lead-up, a period in which small-scale faience production reached particular refinement in both palette and modelling. The unusual iconography, in which a solar-lunar animal physically bears away a chaotic one, would have functioned as a compact talismanic image sufficient in itself to protect the wearer. This amulet exemplifies the capacity of XVIIIth Dynasty faience to combine miniature scale with theologically dense imagery, condensing a cosmological victory into an object small enough to be worn against the body. Its rarity lies in the specific iconography of the baboon shouldering the crocodile, a variant found only occasionally within the far larger body of surviving baboon amulets from the New Kingdom. Dimensions: Height: 3.5cm

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