A GREEK GOLD AMULET IN THE FORM OF A PHALLUS, CIRCA 2ND-3RD CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A GREEK GOLD AMULET IN THE FORM OF A PHALLUS, CIRCA 2ND-3RD CENTURY A.D. Of shield-shaped outline tapering from a broad upper register to a rounded lower terminal, the sheet gold worked in low repoussé and surmounted by an integral suspension loop of plain round section. The upper field carries a raised device of curvilinear form, arranged as a series of looping ridges that read as a stylised phallic motif shown from above, while the lower register bears a raised oval cartouche enclosing a small pointed boss at its centre. The reverse is left plain. The surface retains a soft, warm tone with traces of reddish earthen deposit caught in the recesses of the relief, the edges of the sheet turned slightly to form a raised border. The iconography belongs to the wide family of apotropaic phallic charms produced across the Greek and Roman worlds, in which the male member functioned not as an erotic image but as a protective sign, understood to avert the evil eye (baskania, fascinatio) and to secure health, fertility and good fortune for the wearer. Such amulets were suspended from the neck of adults and, most frequently, of children, whose vulnerability to malign influence was a particular concern of ancient household religion. The pairing of the upper phallic device with a lower oval boss, read here as a testicular or fig-hand element, is characteristic of the compressed, emblematic manner in which these charms were worked in gold sheet, where the small scale of the object required the recognisable form to be reduced to a shorthand of ridges and bosses. Gold was the preferred medium for the more costly examples of this class, both because of its incorruptibility, an appropriate quality for an object intended to guard the body over years of wear, and because the metal itself carried protective connotations in ancient amuletic thought. The technique here, thin sheet raised from the reverse over a former and finished with a soldered loop, is standard for personal ornaments of the Eastern Mediterranean during the middle and later Imperial period, when workshops in the Greek East produced substantial quantities of light, wearable gold jewellery for a broad clientele extending well beyond the elite. This amulet exemplifies the domestic and protective register of Greek gold jewellery under Roman rule, in which the language of high goldsmithing was placed at the service of everyday apotropaic practice. Its interest lies less in refinement of finish than in the survival of a small, personal object whose form declares its function directly, standing within the wider corpus of phallic charms that ran without interruption from the Hellenistic period into late antiquity. Dimensions: Height 3 cm

图片