AN EGYPTIAN ROCK CRYSTAL SCARAB LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXVI-XXX, CIRCA 664-332 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN ROCK CRYSTAL SCARAB, LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXVI-XXX, CIRCA 664-332 B.C. Of broad oval form, carved from a single piece of translucent rock crystal, the dorsal surface modelled in the conventional manner with the clypeus, prothorax and elytra clearly delineated. The head is rendered as a fan of radiating notches above a finely incised band marking the division of the clypeus from the prothorax. The prothorax is set off by a smooth, swelling dome with a central V-shaped suture, and the elytra are carved with deep parallel striations running the length of the back to the posterior. The sides are worked with the suggestion of folded legs along the lower flanks. Areas of pinkish and pale green encrustation remain across the head and within the recessed channels, the residue of long burial against metallic and mineral matter, and the crystal itself retains its glassy translucency with internal veils and minor inclusions visible through the body. The scarab beetle, Scarabaeus sacer, was identified by the Egyptians with the god Khepri, the rising sun, who pushed the solar disc across the sky as the dung-beetle rolls its ball of earth. The form therefore carries one of the central solar and regenerative ideas of Egyptian religion: the daily rebirth of the sun, and by extension the rebirth of the deceased. Scarabs were produced in enormous quantity from the Middle Kingdom onward, as amulets worn in life, as seals, and as funerary objects placed upon the body of the dead, the heart scarab being the most charged of these uses. The present piece, lacking a flat inscribed base in the photograph and worked in the round with careful attention to anatomical division, belongs to the class of amuletic rather than sigillographic scarabs. The choice of rock crystal is the significant feature of this object. The vast majority of surviving scarabs are of steatite, faience or glazed composition, materials suited to mass production and to the symbolic colour-language of Egyptian amuletic practice. Rock crystal is a far less common medium for the type. Hard, difficult to work, and obtained from limited sources, it was reserved in Egyptian lapidary practice for objects of higher status, including inlays, vessels and prestige amulets. Its transparency carried its own symbolic charge, associated with purity and with light, qualities readily aligned with the solar theology of the scarab itself. To carve a scarab from rock crystal is therefore to combine the iconography of solar rebirth with a material that visibly transmits light. By the Late Period, when Egypt passed through Saite, Persian and final native dynasties before Macedonian conquest, the production of amulets reached its widest variety of form and material. The Saite court in particular oversaw a conscious archaism, reviving Old and Middle Kingdom models in finer materials, and hardstone amulets in crystal, carnelian and obsidian became markers of elite funerary equipment. The clean, schematic carving of the present scarab, with its sharply ruled striations and disciplined geometry of the dorsal surfaces, is consistent with the lapidary practice of this period. This scarab exemplifies the Late Period taste for translating a familiar amuletic form into a hardstone of restricted use, where the transparency of the medium and the solar meaning of the form reinforce one another. Its survival in rock crystal, rather than in the commoner faience or steatite, places it within the smaller class of prestige amulets produced for elite burial in the centuries between the Saite revival and the arrival of Alexander. Length: 4.1cm

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