AN EGYPTIAN AGATE FISH AMULET LATE NEW KINGDOM-LATE PERIOD, CIRCA 1150-350 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN AGATE FISH AMULET, LATE NEW KINGDOM-LATE PERIOD, CIRCA 1150-350 B.C. Carved in the round from a translucent banded agate of warm golden and honey tones shading to milky white at the head, the amulet takes the form of a stylised fish, the body of elongated lenticular section tapering from a broad bifurcated tail to a narrow, downturned snout. The tail is rendered as a pair of splayed lobes incised with fine parallel striations to indicate the fin rays, set off from the body by a recessed collar. Two lateral fins flank the body in low relief, each defined along its outer edge by short oblique hatching. A small suspension hole is drilled transversely through the mouth, allowing the amulet to hang horizontally with the body suggesting forward motion through water. The natural striations of the stone run obliquely across the body, producing the impression of scales and dappled light without further surface working. The species is most plausibly identified as the bulti or tilapia (Tilapia nilotica), a Nile fish that figures with marked frequency in Egyptian amuletic and decorative production from the Middle Kingdom onward. The bulti was associated with renewal and rebirth on account of its mouth-brooding behaviour, in which the young appear to emerge from the parent's mouth as if reborn, an image readily assimilated to solar and regenerative theology. Fish pendants of this form were worn by women and children, often suspended from a side-lock of hair, and were understood both as ornaments and as protective devices guarding the wearer against drowning and against the hostile forces of the watery realm. The choice of agate is significant. Hardstones of this kind were imported into Egypt from the eastern deserts and from further afield, and their working required specialised lapidary skill quite distinct from the faience production that supplied the majority of amulets in this period. The natural variegation of the agate, with its warm chromatic banding playing through a translucent matrix, was prized in its own right and exploited by the carver here to suggest the iridescence of a living fish. Comparable bulti amulets are known in carnelian, jasper, gold, faience and electrum, but examples in banded agate are scarcer, and the material situates the present piece within a higher register of personal adornment than the faience equivalents recovered in quantity from settlement and burial contexts. This amulet exemplifies the lapidary tradition of fish pendants in pharaonic Egypt, in which a familiar protective type was elevated by the selection and handling of a chromatically active hardstone. The reading of the natural banding as scales, rather than the imposition of carved scale-pattern over the surface, marks the carver's response to the specific qualities of the material and places the piece among the more accomplished surviving examples of its kind. Length: 3cm

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