AN EGYPTIAN SILVER STIRRUP RING NEW KINGDOM, DYNASTY XVIII, AMARNA PERIOD

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN SILVER STIRRUP RING, NEW KINGDOM, DYNASTY XVIII, AMARNA PERIOD Of stirrup form, the broad oval bezel forged in one with the tapering hoop, the flat face engraved with a vertical column of hieroglyphs oriented along the axis of the finger. The signs read downward and are cut with a controlled, even hand into the metal, their forms still legible beneath a heavy accretion of grey-white chloride corrosion and earthen deposit. The exterior of the hoop retains areas of dark patina broken by patches of exposed silver, while the interior preserves a smoother surface where the ring sat against the skin. The engraved column presents a divine or royal name enclosed within the field of the bezel itself, without a formal cartouche border, in the manner characteristic of Eighteenth Dynasty signet rings. The upper signs appear to include the sun disc and associated elements, above further phonetic and ideographic components; heavy surface encrustation prevents secure reading of every glyph from the photograph alone, but the arrangement conforms to the theophoric or nominal formulae typical of rings produced during the Amarna interlude and its immediate aftermath, when the name of the Aten and the reformulated royal titulary circulated widely on personal jewellery. Silver in pharaonic Egypt was a metal of higher status than gold through much of the Bronze Age, since Egypt possessed abundant gold from its Nubian mines but no native silver of consequence. The metal, referred to as hedj, was imported from the Aegean and the Levant and reserved for objects of significance: temple vessels, royal regalia, and finger rings for members of the court and administration. A silver stirrup ring of this weight, at ten grams, represents a substantial commission and would have belonged to a person of rank. The stirrup form itself, cast or forged from a single piece rather than assembled from a swivelling scarab and wire hoop, is a technical innovation of the Eighteenth Dynasty, emerging as the preferred format for personal seals during the later part of the dynasty and continuing into the Nineteenth. Its integral construction allowed the bezel to serve simultaneously as ornament and as a functional seal-matrix pressed into clay or wax. The Amarna period, spanning the reign of Akhenaten and the brief successions that followed, produced rings of precisely this type in considerable numbers, many bearing the names of the Aten, of Akhenaten, of Nefertiti, of Tutankhamun, or of Ay, distributed as marks of favour and as instruments of administrative sealing. Silver examples are markedly scarcer than the faience and bronze rings that survive in bulk from Amarna workshops, and their survival above ground is limited by the reactivity of the metal in burial conditions. This ring exemplifies the mature Eighteenth Dynasty stirrup form in its most prestigious medium, uniting the reformulated glyphic aesthetic of the Amarna court with the technical accomplishment of New Kingdom metalworking. Its heavy oval bezel and integral hoop mark it as a piece intended for a member of the administrative or courtly elite, and it stands as a rare silver survival from a corpus in which faience and base metal dominate the record. Dimensions: Length of face 2.4 cm; internal diameter 2.1 cm

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