AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE VULTURE AMULET, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 332-30 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE VULTURE AMULET, PTOLEMAIC PERIOD, 332-30 B.C. Modelled in the round and standing upon a narrow integral plinth, the vulture is shown in strict profile with the body facing right, the hooked beak lowered against the breast, and the long wings folded closely against the flanks. The plumage of the wing is rendered in fine parallel striations descending in registers from the shoulder to the pointed tips of the primaries, which sweep down almost to the level of the base. A suspension loop projects from the upper back behind the wing, pierced transversely for a cord. The surface is covered in a bright turquoise-green glaze, pooling more deeply in the recesses of the feathering and along the base, with earthen encrustations adhering in places to the glazed surface. The bird is identifiable as a vulture by its hunched posture, the pronounced hook of the beak, and the heavy carriage of the head low upon the shoulders. In Egyptian religious thought the vulture was the animal of the goddess Nekhbet, tutelary deity of Upper Egypt and one of the Two Ladies who together protected the person of the king, and it was also closely associated with Mut, the great mother goddess of Thebes. Worn in life or placed among the wrappings of the dead, the vulture amulet extended the sheltering wings of the goddess over the wearer, and funerary texts prescribe such amulets for the protection of the mummy, particularly across the breast and shoulders where the outstretched wings of Nekhbet were understood to guard the deceased on the passage into the next world. The medium itself carries meaning. Egyptian faience, a glazed non-clay ceramic of powdered quartz coloured with copper compounds, was known in the language of the workshops as tjehnet, "that which is brilliant," and its luminous blue-green colour was understood to partake of the regenerative properties of the Nile waters and the fresh growth of the fields. For amuletic use the material was doubly appropriate, its colour and substance carrying the promise of renewal that the amulet was intended to secure for its wearer. By the Ptolemaic period, faience workshops attached to the great temple centres were producing amulets of this type in considerable numbers, both for the living and for inclusion in mummy wrappings, and the small scale and pierced suspension of the present example are consistent with such use. This amulet exemplifies the compact, sculpturally assured faience production of the late Egyptian temple workshops, in which a divine attribute was reduced to its essential silhouette without sacrificing anatomical clarity. The confident modelling of the folded wing and the retention of a strong turquoise glaze place it within the mainstream tradition of Ptolemaic protective amulets made for both funerary and personal wear. Dimensions: Height: 2.3cm

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