ASSORTMENT OF GLASS BEADS FROM PHYCHTIA, 1400-1100 B.C.

拍品描述

A GROUP OF LATE HELLADIC GLASS RELIEF BEADS, PHYCHTIA, MYCENAEAN GREECE, CIRCA 1400-1100 B.C. The group comprises ten fragments of moulded glass beads, nine of elongated rectangular form and one of circular discoid form. The rectangular examples are of flattened section, each pierced longitudinally with a fine suspension channel and terminating at the upper edge in a shaped finial suggestive of a stylised palmette or lily crown. Traces of relief moulding survive on several faces, though heavy surface encrustation and iridescent weathering products obscure much of the original decoration. The discoid bead retains a spiral or rosette design in low relief, concentric about a central boss. The glass, originally opaque and probably of a blue or blue-green tone consistent with Mycenaean cobalt-coloured production, is now largely masked by a pale calcareous crust and areas of grey-black devitrification. Small perforations along the sides of certain beads indicate secondary attachment points, suggesting they were originally sewn to a textile ground or strung in multiple registers as part of a composite ornament. The elongated form with foliate terminal belongs to a recognised Mycenaean bead type, produced by pressing molten glass into open stone moulds. Such beads were manufactured in series, often in matching sets, and formed the constituent elements of necklaces, diadems, and decorative bands sewn onto garments or funerary shrouds. The relief motifs on surviving examples of this type include ivy leaves, papyrus flowers, rosettes, argonauts, figure-of-eight shields, and spirals, drawing on the shared decorative vocabulary of Aegean palatial art. The discoid rosette bead in the present group belongs to a well-known parallel category, imitating in glass the gold rosette appliqués recovered in quantity from shaft graves and chamber tombs across the Mycenaean world. Glass in the Late Bronze Age Aegean was a material of considerable prestige. The raw material, then called by scholars a form of early soda-lime glass, was almost certainly imported in ingot form from the specialised workshops of the Levantine coast or Egypt, where the primary production of coloured glass was concentrated during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. The Uluburun shipwreck, carrying cobalt-blue glass ingots alongside copper and tin, illustrates the scale of this trade. In Mycenaean centres the imported material was reworked into small ornaments cast in local moulds, and the deep blue colouration in particular was understood as a substitute for lapis lazuli, a stone unavailable to the Aegean workshops. The distribution of such beads in chamber tombs across the Argolid, including sites in the vicinity of Mycenae itself, indicates that they were valued grave goods associated with the burials of women and children of some standing. Phychtia lies within the immediate hinterland of Mycenae in the Argolid, an area densely occupied during the palatial and post-palatial phases of the Late Helladic period. Finds of this character from the region are consistent with the wider corpus of Mycenaean glass ornament recovered from chamber tomb cemeteries throughout the Argive plain. This group exemplifies the serial production of moulded glass ornament that flourished in the Mycenaean palatial workshops, where an imported and costly material was transformed into standardised regalia for burial with the elite dead. Though fragmentary and heavily weathered, the beads retain the characteristic profile of their type and stand as tangible survivals of the Aegean glass industry at the close of the Bronze Age. Dimensions: Length of longest: 3.6 cm

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