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All auctions / Glass / Egyptian Faience Pataikos Amulet, Scarabs and Scaraboids, Late Dynastic
North Africa, Egypt, Late Dynastic to Roman period. A pocket-sized assembly of Nilotic amuletic power: a molded faience figure of Pataikos, the dwarf god of protection, standing squat and bandy-legged with oversized head and hands drawn to the thighs, accompanied by two faience scarabs and two pottery scaraboids. The scarabs preserve the essential beetle schema, domed elytra above a flat oval base, while the scaraboids reduce the form to a smooth bead-like dome, each longitudinally pierced for stringing. Surfaces are chalky and largely denuded of their original glaze, a common fate of buried faience. Worn in life and gathered into mummy wrappings in death, such amulets invoked Khepri's daily rebirth and the apotropaic ferocity of the dwarf god, whose miniature scale magnified rather than diminished his efficacy. Small pieces, all under an inch. Pataikos takes his name from Herodotus, who compared the dwarf images he saw in Memphite Egypt to the Phoenician "Pataikoi" figureheads mounted on ship prows. Egyptologists identify him as a child-form of Ptah, the Memphite craftsman-creator, and the type flourishes from the Third Intermediate Period onward as one of the most produced faience amulets in the country. Fully elaborated examples stand on a base with Isis and Nephthys flanking, hawks on the shoulders, and a scarab atop the head, the whole assemblage functioning as a compact arsenal against snakes, scorpions, and hostile magic. The scarab's logic is etymological as much as theological: the beetle, kheper, punned on the verb "to become" and on Khepri, the sun at dawn rolling its disc across the sky as the dung beetle rolls its ball. Scaraboids, plain-backed cousins of the true scarab, were cheaper to produce and served equally as seals, beads, and grave goods. Item # 204925
Estimate:$300
To the auctionView all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorGlass
Estimate:
$300
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