AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE WEDJAT-EYE AMULET LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXVI-XXX, 664-343 B.C.

拍品描述

AN EGYPTIAN FAIENCE WEDJAT-EYE AMULET, LATE PERIOD, DYNASTY XXVI-XXX, 664-343 B.C. Of characteristic wedjat form, moulded in low relief and pierced horizontally for suspension, the amulet rendered in a saturated turquoise-blue glaze over a fine faience body. The stylised right eye is composed of an almond-shaped globe with a defined pupil, framed above by a heavy arched brow rendered with regular oblique striations, and completed below by the vertical drop-line and the spiralling curl characteristic of the falcon's cheek marking. Traces of earthen encrustation remain lodged within the incised details, throwing the design into strong relief against the glossy surface. Small losses along the outer edges are consistent with burial and age. The wedjat, or "sound eye," is the restored eye of the falcon god Horus, torn out in his combat with Seth and made whole again by Thoth. As a written sign and as an object it stood for wholeness, healing, and protection. The individual elements of the eye were used in Pharaonic accounting and medical prescriptions as fractions of the hekat, so that the very form carried associations of measure, order, and completeness. Amulets of this type were among the most widely produced protective devices in ancient Egypt, worn by the living, incorporated into jewellery and pectorals, and placed in quantity within the wrappings of the mummified dead, where their apotropaic function extended into the afterlife. The medium is not incidental to the meaning. Egyptian faience, a self-glazing composite of crushed quartz and alkaline flux, was described in Egyptian as tjehnet, "that which is brilliant" or "that which is dazzling," a word applied to sunlight, to the surface of the Nile, and to the flash of divine presence. Its turquoise-blue colour, achieved through copper compounds, evoked the waters from which life renewed itself and the vegetation of the fertile floodplain, and was associated with rebirth and with the goddess Hathor. A wedjat amulet in this particular blue therefore bound together two protective ideas in a single object: the restored eye of Horus, and the regenerative substance of faience itself. Small wedjat amulets of this scale were produced in enormous numbers during the Late Period, when the funerary and votive economy of Egypt operated at full industrial capacity. They were mould-made in workshops attached to temple precincts, glazed in single firings, and distributed both to the living as personal amulets and to embalmers for insertion between the bandages of the deceased, most often over the incision through which the internal organs had been removed. This amulet exemplifies the standardised yet confident production of wedjat pendants in the Twenty-Sixth to Thirtieth Dynasties, when the type reached its most refined mould-made form and when the brilliant copper-blue glaze characteristic of Saite and later workshops was at its most saturated. Its interest lies in the completeness of the design at so small a scale, and in the survival of a glaze surface of the depth and clarity for which Late Period faience is valued. Dimensions: Length: 1.7cm

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