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All auctions / Asian Art / 3 Egyptian Amulets - Faience Scarab, Coptic Bone Ornament, & Terracotta Phallus
North Africa, Egypt, Late Dynastic to Coptic period. A trio of small Egyptian amulets spanning nearly a millennium of belief. The first, in reddish terracotta, is a Romano-Egyptian phallus ornament modeled in the round with testes and a transverse suspension hole, an apotropaic charm meant to repel the evil eye and invite fertility. The second, carved from bone, is a Coptic openwork ornament with a stepped, crenellated crown above a large circular void and lightly incised linear ornament, its abstraction typical of Christian-era Egyptian bonework. The third is a diminutive glazed faience scarab of Late Dynastic type, the beetle's clypeus, prothorax and elytra rendered in economical grooves, its pale surface now largely denuded of glaze. Each is pierced or shaped for stringing, worn close to the body as protection for the living and the dead alike. The scarab beetle, Scarabaeus sacer, was read by the Egyptians as a hieroglyph of becoming: the insect rolling its dung ball across the ground mirrored Khepri, the dawn aspect of the sun god, propelling the solar disc over the horizon. Amulets in this shape were worn in life and heaped into wrappings at burial, promising renewal to the wearer. The phallic amulet belongs to a wider Mediterranean tradition. In Roman Egypt the fascinum was thought to absorb and deflect the malevolent gaze, and examples in terracotta, faience, bone and metal were hung on children, animals and doorways as everyday insurance rather than erotica. Coptic bonework, produced in Egypt's Christian workshops from roughly the fourth century onward, drew on the abundant supply of cattle and camel bone. Its vocabulary of drilled circles, notched edges and stepped silhouettes carries the older pharaonic amulet repertoire into a new religious idiom, and the pieces frequently served as furniture inlay, pins, or strung pendants. Item # 204842
Estimate:$350
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorAsian Art
Estimate:
$350
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