AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE ISIS, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 304-30 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE ISIS, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 304-30 B.C. Modelled in the round against a flat back-pillar, the goddess is shown seated on a low throne with her feet resting on an integral plinth, the tripartite wig falling in heavy lappets to the chest and framing a face in profile. The hands rest on the thighs and the legs are held together in the frontal seated pose reserved for enthroned deities. The back-pillar rises to the level of the crown and is pierced horizontally at shoulder height for suspension, indicating the piece was worn or attached as an amulet. The surface retains a soft turquoise-green glaze with russet accretions gathered in the recesses, the modelling of the wig, chest, and knees still crisp, and traces of incised detail visible on the front of the plinth. The seated form and lappet wig identify the figure as Isis, most likely in the aspect of Isis lactans or Isis enthroned, an iconographic type that by the Ptolemaic period had largely absorbed the earlier attributes of the goddess as divine mother and throne of kingship. In the standard reading of the type, Isis embodies the throne itself, her name written with the hieroglyph of the seat, and her seated posture is therefore not incidental but constitutive of her identity as the support of legitimate rule. Amulets of this form were produced in large numbers for both funerary and votive use, worn in life for protection and placed with the dead to secure the wearer's rebirth under the goddess's patronage. Faience, a self-glazing quartz paste coloured by copper compounds to produce the characteristic blue-green range, carried specific symbolic weight in Egyptian religious production. Its colour was associated with the Nile, with vegetation, and with regeneration, and the material itself was described in Egyptian texts as tjehenet, "that which shines," linking it to solar and lunar brilliance. Small faience amulets of deities were among the most widely distributed devotional objects of the Late and Ptolemaic periods, produced in moulds at temple workshops and disseminated across Egypt and, through trade, across the wider Mediterranean. The Ptolemaic period saw the cult of Isis expand well beyond the borders of Egypt, carried by Greek and later Roman devotees to Delos, Rome, and eventually the northern provinces. Amulets of this type belong to the domestic and personal end of that devotional economy, distinct from the larger cult statuary of the temples but bearing the same iconographic authority. This amulet exemplifies the standardised Ptolemaic Isis type in faience: compact, mould-formed, pierced for suspension, and retaining the essential attributes of the enthroned goddess in miniature. It is a representative survival of the mass devotional production that carried the cult of Isis out of Egypt and into the wider ancient world. Dimensions: Height: 2.8cm

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