A EGYPTIAN FAIENCE GROUP, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 332-30 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN TURQUOISE-GLAZED FAIENCE GROUP OF OSIRIS AND ISIS, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, CIRCA 332-30 B.C. Modelled in high relief against a rectangular back-pillar with rounded upper corners, the group presents two standing deities side by side upon an integral rectangular plinth. The male figure at left strides forward with the left leg advanced, wearing a short kilt and the atef crown, the arms held close to the body with hands emerging at the front to grasp attributes now indistinct. The female figure at right stands with feet together, nude in form, her tripartite wig framing the face and surmounted by a tall crown composed of a sun disc between horns rising to a plumed or vegetal element. Both faces are frontal, the features summarily indicated with heavy-lidded eyes, straight noses, and small mouths. The glaze survives in a deep turquoise across the majority of the surface, with earthen encrustations across the upper section, a brown discolouration along the vertical axis of the plinth, and small losses to the back-pillar and lower edge. Mounted on a modern acrylic base. The pairing identifies the group as Osiris and Isis, the divine couple at the centre of the Egyptian mortuary cult. Osiris, ruler of the underworld and judge of the dead, is recognisable by the atef crown, the tall conical headdress flanked by feathers that signals his sovereignty over the western realm. Isis, his sister and consort, wears the composite crown of horns enclosing a solar disc, an emblem she absorbed from Hathor and which marks her as mother, magician, and protector of the deceased. Presented together in this frontal, hieratic composition, the two form the primary object of appeal in funerary and household piety, invoked for regeneration in the afterlife and for the continuity of the family line through the model of their son Horus. Egyptian faience, a non-clay ceramic of ground quartz coated in an alkaline glaze, carried meaning beyond its physical properties. The characteristic turquoise-to-blue-green colour was associated with the waters of the Nile, with vegetation, and with rebirth, and the material itself was known as tjehnet, "that which shines," linked to solar radiance and to the regenerative capacities of the gods. A faience group of Osiris and Isis therefore unites subject and medium: the colour of the glaze is itself an invocation of the renewal the deities were petitioned to grant. Small votive plaques of this type were produced in considerable numbers under the Ptolemies, when the cult of Isis in particular expanded across the Mediterranean and demand for portable devotional images intensified. The frontal, plaque-like composition with integral back-pillar reflects a late phase of Egyptian religious statuary, in which older iconographic conventions were preserved with fidelity while the format adapted to serve private devotion at domestic shrines and as funerary deposits. The summary modelling of the faces and the schematic treatment of the bodies are characteristic of series production in faience workshops of the period. This group exemplifies Ptolemaic faience devotional sculpture at its most direct: a compact, brightly glazed image of the two deities whose union underwrote the Egyptian promise of resurrection, produced for personal piety in a medium whose colour was itself sacred. The survival of the glaze in strong turquoise across most of the surface preserves the visual effect for which such objects were made. Dimensions: Height: 6.8cm; Height on stand: 7.2cm

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