A GREEK AGATE SCARAB DEPICTING A BULL, CIRCA 5TH-4TH CENTURY B.C.

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A GREEK AGATE SCARAB DEPICTING A BULL, CIRCA 5TH-4TH CENTURY B.C. Of oval form, the translucent orange-pink agate cut as a scarab and mounted on a bronze swivel-hoop, the loop pierced longitudinally through the stone and terminating in two conical bezels retaining traces of green patination and earthen deposits. The intaglio on the flat underside is engraved with a bull shown in profile facing left, standing four-square on a ground line, the head lowered as if grazing or preparing to charge, the musculature of the shoulder and haunch rendered in rounded modelling and the tail falling in a single curve behind the rear legs. The hoop is preserved intact, retaining its full arc, and the stone shows scattered incrustation across the upper surface with the engraved field remaining clear. The subject of the bull carried a range of meanings in the Greek world. As an image of virility and physical power it appeared on coinage of numerous city-states, most notably Thurii, Sybaris, and the cities of Euboea, and served as a civic emblem tied to local cults and mythic foundations. In the intaglio tradition the standing bull is among the more frequently engraved animal subjects, treated with an economy of line that reveals the engraver's understanding of the creature's weight and stance. The lowered-head pose seen here belongs to a well-established compositional type in late Classical gem engraving, in which the animal is shown in a moment of arrested motion rather than in narrative action. Agate was among the preferred materials of the Greek gem-cutter from the Archaic period onward, valued for its hardness, translucency, and the banded or clouded patterns that gave each stone a distinct character. Its working required abrasive tools and rotary drills, and the surviving corpus of engraved agates reflects the accumulated skill of workshops in East Greece, the Peloponnese, and the Greek cities of southern Italy. The scarab form itself, adopted from Egyptian and Phoenician prototypes and transmitted through Cyprus and the eastern Aegean, became naturalised in Greek glyptic during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., where it served both as a personal seal and as an amulet, the beetle's back carved in careful naturalistic detail while the flat underside carried the owner's device. The swivel mount preserved here is the standard means by which such scarabs were worn, allowing the stone to be turned to display either the beetle or the intaglio. This scarab exemplifies the late Classical Greek adaptation of the Egyptianising scarab form to a purely Hellenic pictorial language, in which the sacred beetle of the Nile has become a mount for a naturalistically observed animal subject drawn from the repertoire of the Greek engraver. The retention of the original bronze hoop, uncommon in surviving examples, gives the piece its complete functional character as a wearable seal. Dimensions: Length: 2.5cm

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