ASSORTMENT OF EGYPTIAN SILVER AMULETS, LATE PERIOD, CIRCA 664-332 B.C.

拍品描述

AN ASSORTMENT OF EGYPTIAN SILVER AMULETS, LATE PERIOD, CIRCA 664-332 B.C. A group of twenty small silver amulets and beads, comprising figural pendants, architectural elements, and elongated biconical beads of lentoid section. The figural pieces include two standing quadrupeds, likely canid, rendered in openwork with a suspension loop rising from the back; two flies with striated wings and rounded heads, one with an integral loop at the crown; a seated feline in the round, hollow-cast with a ring above the head; and two small mask-like heads surmounted by a rectangular element, the faces frontally rendered with incised eyes and mouth. A larger group consists of pear or gourd-form pendants, each formed of a rounded spherical body rising to a narrow neck terminating in a suspension loop and set upon a small flaring foot. The remaining pieces are elongated biconical beads, spindle-form, pierced longitudinally, their surfaces retaining traces of earthen deposit and a soft grey patina consistent with long burial. The typological range across this group is consistent with amuletic material recovered from Late Period burials, in which small figures of protective deities and creatures were incorporated into the wrappings of the mummy or strung together as personal ornaments in life. The fly, worn from at least the Middle Kingdom onwards, was associated with tenacity and military valour, and by the Late Period had become a common protective form worked in metal and faience. The seated cat carries the identity of Bastet, whose cult at Bubastis was at its height in this period and whose amulets in silver, bronze and faience were produced in considerable quantity for votive dedication and personal wear. The standing canids, if read as jackals, invoke Anubis and Wepwawet, guardians of the necropolis and openers of the way. The small frontal head surmounted by an architectural element likely represents Hathor or a Hathoric capital, a form widely reproduced in miniature amuletic silverware. Silver held a distinct position in Egyptian material hierarchy. Rarer than gold and understood as the substance of the bones of the gods, it was imported principally from the Aegean and Levantine trade circuits and its use marked commissions of higher status than the ubiquitous faience amulets of the same forms. The scale of the present pieces, together with the loops for suspension, indicates they were made to be worn or strung, whether as a single chain of protective figures or distributed across the person and the wrappings of the deceased. The gourd-shaped pendants find their counterparts in the granulated and hollow-formed jewellery of the Twenty-Sixth and later dynasties, when Egyptian goldsmiths and silversmiths worked increasingly in the round and produced beadwork of considerable technical refinement. This group exemplifies the everyday amuletic vocabulary of the Late Period, in which the great pantheon of Egyptian protection is compressed into pocket-sized silver forms intended for continuous personal contact. Assembled together, the pieces record the persistence of Old and Middle Kingdom types (the fly, the seated cat, the jackal) into the last centuries of pharaonic rule, and the diffusion of silver as a devotional medium beyond the highest court circles. Dimensions: Length of largest 2.2 cm.

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