AN EGYPTIAN SERPENTINE HEART SCARAB LATE PERIOD, 664-332 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN SERPENTINE HEART SCARAB, LATE PERIOD, 664-332 B.C. Of oval form, carved in the round from a dark green serpentine of mottled tone, the domed back modelled as the body of the sacred beetle Scarabaeus sacer. The clypeus is rendered as a serrated fringe of trapezoidal teeth encircling the head, with a pair of crossed bands above the smooth vertex. The prothorax is defined by a single deep transverse groove, and the elytra by a central dividing line flanked by regular vertical striations descending to the posterior. The legs are drawn in low relief along the sides, their notched contour continuing the serrated silhouette of the head. Traces of pale sandy encrustation remain in the recesses, particularly along the wing-cases and beneath the clypeal fringe. The underside is flat, prepared to receive an inscription. The scarab was the most enduring of Egyptian amulets, its form drawn from the dung-beetle whose habit of rolling a ball of earth before it was read as an image of the sun's daily passage across the sky. The insect, believed to generate spontaneously from the ground, became identified with Khepri, the god of the rising sun and of coming-into-being, and by extension with the promise of rebirth. Heart scarabs of this larger, sculptural type belong to a specific funerary use distinct from the small seal-scarabs worn in life. Placed on the breast of the deceased, they stood in for the physical heart during the weighing of the soul before Osiris, and their undersides typically carried a version of Spell 30B of the Book of the Dead, addressed to the heart itself and pleading that it not testify against its owner in the judgment hall. Serpentine was among the stones prescribed for such amulets, its dark green hue carrying the same symbolic charge as the more costly greens of malachite and feldspar. Green was the colour of new vegetation, of the reborn Osiris, and of resurrection itself, and the choice of a green stone for an object destined to accompany the dead into the afterlife was never incidental. The material was harder and more resistant than steatite, allowing the crisp, deep carving visible here in the striated elytra and the sharply serrated clypeus. By the Late Period, workshops in the Nile valley produced heart scarabs in considerable numbers for a broadening clientele that extended beyond the highest court circles, though the finer examples retained the sculptural conventions established in the New Kingdom. This scarab exemplifies the confident sculptural vocabulary of Late Period funerary amulets, where the anatomy of the beetle is stylised into a legible sequence of grooves and serrations without loss of the animal's compact volume. The choice of green serpentine, the sculptural treatment of the clypeus and elytra, and the flat underside prepared for a Book of the Dead inscription together mark it as a heart scarab in the developed tradition of the seventh to fourth centuries B.C. Dimensions: Length 2.5 cm

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