AN EGYPTIAN AMETHYST SCARAB 2ND MILLENNIUM B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN AMETHYST SCARAB, EGYPT, 2ND MILLENNIUM B.C. Carved in the round from a single piece of translucent amethyst of pale violet tone, the beetle shown in the conventional dorsal posture upon an integral oval base. The clypeus is rendered as a notched arc at the front, the head divided from the prothorax by a clean incised line, and the elytra separated along the central suture running the full length of the back. The legs are summarily indicated in low relief along the flanks, with the tarsi suggested by short transverse strokes against the edge of the base. The body retains a soft polish overall, with traces of earthen residue caught in the recesses of the carving and along the underside. The scarab takes the form of Scarabaeus sacer, the dung beetle whose habit of rolling a ball of dung across the ground was understood in Egyptian thought as a terrestrial image of the sun's daily passage. The beetle was identified with Khepri, the morning aspect of the solar deity, and by extension with the verb kheper, "to come into being." The form therefore functioned simultaneously as a sign of regeneration, of solar renewal, and of the perpetual becoming of the cosmos. Whether worn in life as an amulet or placed with the dead, the scarab was among the most charged of all Egyptian object types, its meaning legible at every level of society. The choice of amethyst is itself significant. The stone was extracted principally from the mines at Wadi el-Hudi in the Eastern Desert south of Aswan, worked intensively during the Middle Kingdom under direct royal authority. Amethyst was reserved for high-status commissions, appearing in the jewellery of royal women and in elite funerary equipment, and its violet colour was prized for the way it animated under light. Its use for a scarab of this scale and finish points to a workshop producing for a patron of considerable rank, the hardness of the quartz requiring abrasive cutting and prolonged polishing rather than the simpler steatite techniques used for more common amuletic scarabs. This scarab exemplifies the convergence of solar theology and lapidary luxury that defined the Middle Kingdom amuletic tradition. The reduction of the beetle to its essential anatomical lines, combined with the deliberate selection of a costly imported-quality hardstone, places it within the small group of amethyst scarabs produced for the upper tiers of Egyptian society, where the symbolism of becoming was given material form in a stone whose own translucency seemed to embody the very quality it signified. Length: 5cm

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