A group of Egyptian hardstone amulets, mainly New Kingdom to Third Intermediate Period, circa 1550 -  656 B.C.

拍品描述

A group of Egyptian hardstone amulets, mainly New Kingdom to Third Intermediate Period, circa 1550 - 656 B.C., including miniature obsidian two fingers, 4.7cm long; a carnelian djed pillar, 3.1cm; three heart ‘ib’ amulets, one in basalt with damaged back, 2.4cm, another feldspar, 2.5cm, and carnelian, 1.8cm; a feldspar squatting falcon-headed deity, 2.4cm high; two feldspar papyrus columns, 1cm and 3.5cm high; a feldspar pyramid-shaped seal, 1.7cm wide, three naturalistic hardstone button scarabs, 1.6cm maximum length, another naturalistic hardstone scarab, 2cm long; a lapis lazuli button scarab with turtle/falcon head, 1.1cm long; two hardstone miniature udjat eyes, 1.1cm max length; two small lapis lazuli amulets of deities, 2cm max height; a small carnelian bead, 1cm long; a feldspar papyrus column, possibly ancient, 2.6cm long; an Egyptian faience amulet of a striding deity, possibly falcon-headed, 3.2cm, Late Period, circa 664-332 B.C., and a bronze mould with a quadriga, possibly a Roman forger’s mould, 2.7cm diam (22) Provenance: Formerly in the collection of Victor Adda (1885-1965) Born in Alexandria, from a banking family installed in Cairo since before Napoleon’s expedition of 1798, living first under the protection of the Austro-Hungarian Consulate (and of the Greek Consulate after the outbreak of WWI), Victor Adda took over the family business which had been renamed Eastern Export Company. Born in an Italian-speaking household, educated in a French-speaking boarding-school in Geneva, trained in the cotton-plantations of the Greek-speaking Nile Delta region, Adda mastered Italian, French and English, but also Arabic and some Greek, which allowed him to develop many international relationships. Despite his company being confiscated after the war of 1948, he remained in Egypt until he had to escape to Europe, following the expulsion of Jews from Egypt in 1956-57, and he died in Rome. Alexandria was a center of archaeological collecting amongst the Italian and Greek communities, a famous example being Antonis Benakis – the cotton merchant to whom we owe the Benaki museum in Athens. Adda became vice-president of the Société d’Archéologie, which supervised the Greco-Roman museum which the Italians had created in 1892. He himself formed an important collection of coins and antiquities – a passion which he developed in his teens. He was well-known, both in the Egyptian Jewish bourgeoisie and the European art world, and visits to his home inspired other collectors such as Jean Claude Gandur. In one of his daughter’s words: “the collection was so well known and admired by experts that the king of Italy himself, Victor Emmanuel III, a great coin collector, expressed the desire to see it during his exile in Alexandria and was received by my father at our home”.

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