AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE AMULET OF SHU, NEW KINGDOM, DYNASTY XVIII, CIRCA 1353-1336 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE AMULET OF SHU, NEW KINGDOM, DYNASTY XVIII, CIRCA 1353-1336 B.C. Modelled in the round against a flat back plate, the small amulet depicts the god Shu kneeling on one knee, his arms raised above his head to support the disc of the sun. The figure is set against a rectangular slab that rises behind him and terminates in a rounded upper edge, from which the solar disc emerges in low relief. The kneeling body is compactly modelled, with the bent leg advanced and the supporting knee resting on a low integral base. Traces of the original pale green glaze remain across the surface, now much reduced and interrupted by extensive earthen encrustation of reddish brown that has settled into the recesses of the modelling. Shu is shown here in his characteristic role as the god of air and light, the atmospheric principle who lifts the sky from the earth. The gesture of the raised arms supporting the sun renders in miniature the cosmological act by which he was believed to separate Nut, the sky, from Geb, the earth, holding the two apart so that creation might continue. Amulets of this iconography were worn by the living and placed among the wrappings of the dead, where the god's sustaining gesture was understood to guarantee the continued passage of the sun and, by extension, the daily renewal of the wearer. The medium is significant. Egyptian faience, a glazed non-clay ceramic composed principally of crushed quartz and natron with copper colourants producing its distinctive blue-green tonality, carried associations with regeneration, the waters of the Nile, and the light of the sun itself. The material was regarded as tjehnet, the "brilliant" or "dazzling" substance, and its luminous surface was understood to participate in the solar and life-giving qualities of the deities it depicted. For an amulet of Shu, whose function is to uphold the sun and sustain the breath of life, the choice of faience is not incidental but iconographically appropriate: the substance and the subject reinforce one another. The dating supplied places this piece within the reign of Akhenaten and the religious reforms of the Amarna period, during which solar theology was elevated above the traditional pantheon and the disc of the sun became the central object of state cult. Amulets of Shu supporting the solar disc take on a particular resonance in this context, since the cosmological role of the god intersects directly with the Aten-focused theology of the court. Faience amulets of this subject continued to be produced before and after the Amarna interval, but examples securely placed within Dynasty XVIII carry the specific weight of a moment when the sun's daily support was the central preoccupation of Egyptian religious thought. This amulet exemplifies the small-scale devotional production of the New Kingdom, in which cosmological ideas of great scale were compressed into objects small enough to be worn against the body. The kneeling posture, the raised arms, and the solar disc together form one of the most concise theological images in the Egyptian repertoire, and the surviving glaze traces preserve the material's original claim to solar brilliance. Dimensions: Height: 3cm

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