A LATE ROMAN BLOODSTONE MAGICAL INTAGLIO, ENGRAVED WITH A DEITY FIGURE SURROUNDED BY ASTRAL SYMBOLS

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A LATE ROMAN BLOODSTONE MAGICAL INTAGLIO, ENGRAVED WITH A DEITY FIGURE SURROUNDED BY ASTRAL SYMBOLS, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, 3RD-4TH CENTURY A.D. Of oval form and flat section, the dark green heliotrope shot through with characteristic blood-red inclusions, engraved in intaglio on one face with a composite anguipede deity. The figure stands frontally, cuirassed at the torso, with the head of a cock crowned by a radiate diadem, and lower limbs that terminate in two coiling serpents in place of legs. He raises a whip in the right hand and holds a round shield at his left flank, upon which is inscribed the voces magicae IAΩ in Greek characters. Around the figure are disposed a crescent moon, multiple stars of six and eight points, and, at upper right, a small subsidiary figure standing before a low altar. The Greek letters IAΩ appear again to the left of the deity's torso, with further characters below and to the right that continue around the field. The reverse is smoothly polished and undecorated. Wear is consistent with ancient use, with minor chipping to the edge. The figure is the type universally known to scholarship as the anguipede or Abrasax, one of the most widely engraved subjects on Graeco-Egyptian magical gems of the Imperial and Late Antique periods. The cock's head signals vigilance and the solar dawn; the serpent legs draw on chthonic and regenerative associations; the cuirass and whip present the deity as a militant protector; and the shield inscribed IAΩ carries the Greek transliteration of the Tetragrammaton, the ineffable name of the God of Israel absorbed into the syncretic magical vocabulary of the eastern Mediterranean. The surrounding stars and crescent locate the figure within a cosmic setting, while the subsidiary worshipper before the altar indicates the ritual register of the image. Gems of this class functioned as amulets, worn on the person to secure divine protection, avert illness, or compel a desired outcome, and their power was understood to reside jointly in the image, the inscribed names, and the material itself. The choice of bloodstone is not incidental. In the lapidary tradition transmitted through the Greek magical papyri and the pseudo-Orphic Lithika, heliotrope was accorded specific solar and haematic virtues, its red inclusions read as drops of blood upon a green ground and connected in later Christian interpretation with the wounds of Christ but, in the pre-Christian and non-Christian magical use, associated with vitality, staunching of blood, and the sun's power over the visible world. It was the preferred medium for gems bearing the anguipede, and the association between stone and subject is so consistent that bloodstone amulets of this type form a recognisable and coherent group across the eastern provinces, with production centres proposed in Alexandria, Antioch, and the Syro-Palestinian coast. The Greek magical letters, the composite iconography, and the astral surround belong to a shared visual and textual system in which Egyptian, Jewish, Greek, and Near Eastern elements were fused into a practical theology of protection. IAΩ, ABRASAX, and SABAΩΘ are the names most frequently invoked; the anguipede is their most frequently figured embodiment. Such gems circulated widely, from Roman Britain to Mesopotamia, but the concentration of surviving examples and the linguistic register of their inscriptions point to the Greek-speaking eastern provinces as the principal zone of production. This intaglio exemplifies the mature Late Antique magical gem in its most fully articulated form, in which the anguipede is not shown alone but embedded within a legible cosmos of stars, altar, worshipper, and divine names. It belongs to the corpus that stands at the crossroads of Graeco-Roman glyptic tradition and the emergent religious syncretism of the third and fourth centuries, and it preserves, in the compass of a single stone, the working vocabulary of Late Antique ritual practice.3.5cm

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