Some antiquities I haven't previously posted

Given that by the New Kingdom there were as many 401 ushabtis in each tomb (theoretically, 365 workers and 36 overseers, although the latter disappeared eventually), it's my understanding that the majority were always uninscribed. (Sometimes, forgers take genuine uninscribed ushabtis and apply fake hieroglyphic inscriptions -- often nonsensical, I believe -- to make them more valuable.) Also by the New Kingdom, mass production using molds was already common. See the summary of the history of ushabtis at https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/shabti/. (Which is why my inscribed ushabti of the general Hor-em-achbit is so similar to several others I've seen.) I also own a small paperback book published in the UK in 1995, by Harry M. Stewart, called "Egyptian Ushabtis." (Even more useful and interesting, with many color photographs, is a 1994 paperback book called "Amulets of Ancient Egypt" by Carol Andrews, a curator at the British Museum.)

 

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An interesting, and sad, parallel to how some "forgers" take genuine bronze Roman or Byzantine items (fibulae, rings, mirrors, vessels, etc.) and add inscriptions in an attempt to significantly increase the value.

SC

 

Yes, the beads, the fibulae and buckles belong together. They stayed together for the last 1600 years or so. And yes, the strap end belongs to that buckle, which is rare. Normally they get separated.

 

Many thanks for the elucidation and references, @DonnaML. Gonna go trawl my favorite guilty pleasure, A-a-on.

 

I must be very dense today, because I have no idea what that means. Are those supposed to be blanks to be filled in? If so, there's only one thing I can think of, and it's got nothing to do with coins or antiquities, and doesn't sound like a guilty pleasure!

 

...Okay, Clean-Coming Time. It was Amazon, for the books. ...Sadly, the ones they have are on the crazy side of life, pricewise.

 

Fantastic pieces @DonnaML . I only have some antiquities. For some reason I never really got into them as much as coins, maybe due to space. My wife puts up with coins because they are small. I have an old mahogany china cabinet full of some stuff, but nothing as brilliant as yours. Lots of oil lamps, chinese molds, etc. Maybe best piece is a cuneiform cornerstone cone.

 

I think he means "throw." Please ignore him.

[My response to a troll's comment that seems to have been deleted.]

 

I have never been an enthusiastic Egyptian scarab collector, although I do have a couple that I posted early in this thread. But I recently saw one offered by a German dealer on an art/antiquities platform I've previously bought from, that caught my eye (largely because of its animal theme). I bought it even though it was completely unattributed, with no information on its date or place of origin, or even a description of what it portrayed. But people in an antiquities group to which I belong agreed that it appears to be authentic, and after some research I was able to find a couple of closely comparable scarabs in museums, and form a fairly good idea of its period and possible place of origin.

Here are a couple of photos from the dealer, who described it only as a "glazed black steatite" scarab (I have strong doubts that it's actually stone, rather than a glazed composition/pottery scarab), 2.3 cm. long. The dealer professed not to know more than that about its origin, explaining that he's a collector selling specimens from his collection rather than a full-time dealer, that his specialty is ushabtis, not scarabs, and that he bought the scarab in 2006 from another German dealer together with a ushabti.



I didn't have to do any research to see that the scarab has the remnants of a bluish glaze, and to identify the animal as a crouching lion, with a sun disk above its body probably representing Ra (or Amun-Ra after the merger of those two deities' identities). I couldn't tell more than that -- and still don't necessarily know much more about the scarab's symbolism, or its meaning (if any) in hieroglyphics.

Here are some photos I took after I received the scarab from Germany the other day, sent by DHL Express:









I have to ask myself, if the scarab is really made of steatite, then what's the pale brownish material that seems to be showing through from underneath the glaze, both on the top and the underside?

I also made an impression with Sculpey:



The scarab and the impression together (the scarab isn't actually that blue; it looks more like the photos above):



I can't decide if the horizontal part of the lion directly beneath the back of its body is supposed to be its tail, or its back feet. Is it possible, if those are the back feet, that the tail is what appears to go up diagonally to the left from their rightmost end?

By doing some research (for instance, googling "lion," "sun disk," and "scarab"), I was able to find a drawing of a comparable scarab at the lower right of this picture at p. 35 of the famous archaeologist Flinders Petrie's book Historical Scarabs (1889), available online:



The "XXVI" on the upper left refers to the 26th Dynasty, and I interpret the handwriting beneath the drawing of the similar scarab as reading "blue-green gone brown," and as identifying the scarab as made of "pot[tery]." The handwriting at the top suggests that perhaps the symbol of lion and sun disk refers to the title of the 26th Dynasty pharaoh Psemthek I (= Psammetichus I = Psamtik I, the more current spelling). The book identifies the scarab as being in the collection of University College, London. The scarab is indeed very similar to mine (something rather unusual to find, I think), although the placement of the other markings besides the lion and sun disk is somewhat different from mine, and the part of the lion beneath the back part of its body appears definitely to be its tail. So mine is certainly not just a copy.

I found a small photo of what appears to be the same scarab at Plate LV, No. 4 of Petrie's later book Scarabs and Cylinders with Names (1917), consisting entirely of artifacts from the UCL collection. The plate also references the 26th Dynasty, and Psemthek I:



The description of # 4 on Plate LV: (from the same book) gives place of discovery, the material, and the color, namely Teh el Barud, made of pottery, color "Blue, burnt [sic] red-brown."



It seems from this book I found on Google Books that Teh el Barud is near Naukratis in the Nile Delta -- which was the site of some well-known expeditions that Petrie conducted in the 1884 and 1885 seasons:

The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos
by Archibald Henry Sayce (Author)

1896. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... "APPENDIX VI ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCURSIONS IN THE DELTA (1) Tel el-Yehudiyeh or Onion.--Take the train from Cairo at 10 A.m., reaching Shibin el-Qanater at 12.25. Leave Shibin el-Qanater at 5.57 P.m., reaching Cairo at 6.50. Donkeys can be procured at Shibin, but it is a pleasant walk of a mile and a half through the fields (towards the south-east) to the Tel. There is a cafi at Shibin adjoining the station, but it is advisable to take lunch from Cairo. (2) Kom el-Atrib or Athribis.--The mounds lie close to the station of Benha el-'Asal, north-east of the town, and can easily be explored between two trains. All trains between Cairo and Alexandria stop at Benha. (3) Naukratis.--The mounds of Naukratis (Kom Qa'if) lie nearly five miles due west of the station of Teh el-Barud on the line between Cairo and Alexandria, where all trains stop except the express. The first half of the walk is along a good road under an avenue of trees, but after a village is reached it leads through fields. Donkeys are not always to be had at Teh el-Barud. The low mounds west of the station are not earlier than the Roman period."

See also Baedeker's Egypt for 1898, at p. 21:

"53 1/2 M. Teh el-Barud, a village with a large mound of ruins, is the junction for a branch-line skirting the W. coast of the Nile delta. None of the express-trains stop here.

This branch-line is an alternative route to Cairo, but is of no importance to tourists. . . . About 3 M. to the W. of Teh el-Barud, near the modern Nebireh, on the ancient Canopic arm of the Nile, lie the ruins of Naucratis, a Greek commercial city, founded by Aahmes. The ruins, discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie and excavated in 1885, do not repay a visit."

Thus, I was able to narrow down a possible place of origin for my scarab, on the theory that it's where an extremely similar one was found.

To be continued.

 

Very cool, @DonnaML

 

Continuation: Petrie's 1917 book Scarabs and Cylinders with Names also offers a possible interpretation of the lion and sun disk motif, in its text explicating Plate LV:



So, according to this theory, the Ra (sun disk) and lion motif on my scarab could be a reference to the royal badge of Psamtik I, of the 26th Dynasty, who reigned from 664–610 BCE.

Interestingly, the comparable scarab I discovered is still in the collection of the University College, London, now known as the Petrie Museum, bearing the number UC.14707:





The design of the top (scarab) side is quite different from mine, but I still think the bottom side is really quite similar.

I found a second comparable lion and sun disk scarab (albeit not quite as similar) in the British Museum's collection as No. EA23617; see https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA23617. Here are two of the British Museum's photos of that scarab:





A drawing of the same scarab can be found as No. 42 at Plate xxxvii of another publication by Petrie (Naukratis, Part I, 1884–5 (Third Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund), London), from 1886, recording the finds during the Naukratis digs in 1884-85 -- in other words, very close to the find spot of the first comparable scarab at Teh el Barud, three miles from Naukratis (see previous post).

The text accompanying these photos at the British Museum's website states as follows in pertinent part:

"Object Type scarab
Museum number EA23617
Description Mould-made scarab in glazed composition; back simply modelled with single outlines indicating clypeus, prothorax and elytra; at side, legs very simplified, indicated by two broken horizontal grooves; underside decorated with representation of a recumbent lion to right and sun-disc above its back; motif stamped rather than incised, encircled by groove near edge; longitudinally pierced; glossy yellow glaze well preserved; no core visible.
Cultures/periods 26th Dynasty Production date 600 BC-570 BC (mainly).
Production place Made in: Scarab Factory Africa: Egypt: Lower Egypt: Nile Delta: Naukratis: Scarab Factory
Excavator/field collector Excavated by: Egypt Exploration Fund Findspot Found/Acquired: Naukratis Africa: Egypt: Lower Egypt: Nile Delta: Naukratis.
Materials glazed composition Technique glazed mould-made stamped pierced
Dimensions Length: 1.15 centimetres Thickness: 0.60 centimetres Width: 0.90 centimetres.
Curator's comments: . . .
Scarabs with a lion motif depicted on the base belong to a standard group produced at the “Scarab Factory” (on its various productions, see Webb forthcoming). Petrie illustrated a number of different versions (Petrie 1886, pl. XXXVII, 34-45). This scarab belongs to a type which was widely distributed in the Mediterranean area and Southern Russia (Gorton 1996, 93, 95-96, type XXVIII A, subtype A49-72, especially A50 for this piece)."

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the Gorton book -- Gorton, Andrée Feghali, Egyptian and Egyptianizing scarabs: a typology of steatite, faience, and paste scarabs from Punic and other Mediterranean sites (Oxford, 1996). But it seems that the suggestion is that even if my scarab was produced at the "Scarab Factory" at Naukratis (or Teh el Barud), it could have been found in many other places.

The material composition of my scarab, then, may well be relevant to the question of its place of origin: if it's really made of glazed steatite (a/k/a soapstone), as the dealer suggested, than it would have to have been carved. But if it's actually made of glazed pottery or composition material, then the chances are it was made in a mold, like the two comparable scarabs and other products of the "Scarab Factory."

Leaving aside the question of my scarab's material and turning again to its possible interpretation, I found an article at the British Museum's website proposing an alternative meaning, namely that the lion and sun disk motif, rather than being the royal badge of Psamtik I, may instead be a coded reference to Amun-Ra in his capacity as the Hidden One, with the meaning revealed via the process of acrophony. See Naukratis: Greeks in Egypt; Scarabs, scaraboids and amulets, by Aurelia Masson, at pp. 26 & 28-29 below. The third photo on p. 28 depicts the British Museum lion and sun disk scarab No. EA23617.





If anyone has any thoughts on any of this, or has any scarabs of their own that they'd like to post -- or any other leonine or felid artifacts! - please post them.

 

Wow! Anglo saxon antiquities have always interested me but I am worried about UK customs...Im surprised that was allowed to leave the country

 

The recent questions and discussions in another thread about artifacts reminded me of this amulet, which I purchased last month but have never posted before. It's my first and only artifact that was formerly on display at a museum (in Atlanta), where it was on loan for a number of years. Despite the feet being broken off, I think the details are extremely well-preserved.

Egypt, pale green faience amulet of Ptah, depicted wearing skull cap, straight false beard, broad collar, body with mummiform shape, hands emerging to grasp large was-scepter, a symbol of power & dominion (long, straight staff with forked lower end & stylized jackal head on top with eye visible); pierced for suspension; pillar in back; missing feet; Late Period, 722-322 BCE. 46 mm. high. Purchased 2021, T. Squintlee Gallery, Bristow, VA (Richard Banks). Ex. Sands of Time Ancient Art, Wash, DC, purchased by R. Banks 5/09/2015 ; previously on loan by private NY collector to Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta GA, 1998-2015 (Loan # L1998.62.44) ; originally purchased as part of group lot at Sotheby’s auction in 1998. [I have not yet determined which auction or lot number.]*











On display at the Carlos Museum at Emory:





In group photo of wall display at museum, top row, second from left;



* From Ptah article in Wikipedia: Ptah "is an ancient Egyptian deity, the god of craftsmen and architects. In the triad of Memphis, he is the husband of Sekhmet and the father of Nefertem. He was also regarded as the father of the sage Imhotep. . . . Ptah is an Egyptian creator god who existed before all other things and, by his will, thought the world into existence. It was first conceived by Thought, and realized by the Word: Ptah conceives the world by the thought of his heart and gives life through the magic of his Word. . . .
Ptah is generally represented in the guise of a man with green skin, contained in a shroud sticking to the skin, wearing the divine beard, and holding a sceptre combining three powerful symbols of ancient Egyptian religion: The Was sceptre,
The sign of life, Ankh, The Djed pillar. These three combined symbols indicate the three creative powers of the god: power (was), life (ankh) and stability (djed)."

Also from Wikipedia: "Gradually he formed with Osiris a new deity called Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Statuettes representing the human form, the half-human, half-hawk form, or simply the pure falcon form of the new deity began to be systematically placed in tombs to accompany and protect the dead on their journey to the West."

My Roman Alexandrian coin of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris:

Hadrian, Billon Tetradrachm, Year 12 (127/128 AD), Alexandria, Egypt Mint. Obv. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right, seen from rear, ΑΥΤ ΚΑΙ - ΤΡΑΙ ΑΔΡΙΑ ϹƐΒ / Rev. Mummiform Ptah-Sokar-Osiris* standing right, wearing solar disk as headdress, holding was scepter tipped with jackal head, L ΔWΔƐ-ΚΑΤΟΥ [= Year 12 spelled out]. RPC [Roman Provincial Coinage] Vol. III 5713 (2015); RPC III Online at https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/3/5713, Emmett 883.12 [Emmett, Keith, Alexandrian Coins (Lodi, WI, 2001)]; BMC 16 Alexandria 637 & Pl. XXIII [Pool, Reginald Stuart, A Catalog of the Greek Coins in the British Museum, Vol. 16, Alexandria (London, 1892)]; Sear RCV II 3732; Köln 982 [Geissen, A., Katalog alexandrinischer Kaisermünzen, Köln, Band II (Hadrian-Antoninus Pius) (Cologne, 1978, corrected reprint 1987)]; Dattari (Savio) 1445 [Savio, A. ed., Catalogo completo della collezione Dattari Numi Augg. Alexandrini (Trieste, 2007)]; Milne 1259 [Milne, J., A Catalogue of the Alexandrian Coins in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, 1933, reprint with supplement by Colin M. Kraay); K&G 32.458. 24 mm., 13.85 g., 11 h.



*From the description in the CNG Triton XXI Catalog (Staffieri Collection, Jan 9. 2018) of the example from the Dattari Collection (No. 1445), sold in the Triton XXI auction as Lot 61: The image of the Ptah-Sokar-Osiris divinity belongs to Egyptian theology, and in particular to funeral worship. It brings together three famous members of the Pharaonic Pantheon through their respective symbols: the headdress and scepter for Ptah, the solar disk for Osiris, and the mummiform wrappings for Sokar – the "Lord of the Necropolis." These three associated divinities call upon the concepts of "mourning" and "life", evoking at the same time the pain associated with death and the hope of resurrection. The main sanctuaries of Ptah, Sokar, and Osiris were at Memphis and Abydos.

Note that the amulet of Ptah and the coin depicting Ptah-Sokar-Osiris do bear a certain resemblance in the basic mummiform shape, the skull-cap, the was scepter, etc.

Please post any Egyptian artifact or Roman Egyptian coin you feel like posting.

 

Another stunner, @DonnaML, along with your unfailing erudition --including your implicit caveat about Petrie.
(Reminiscent of the principle that where scholarship is concerned, 'old' doesn't necessarily mean 'bad.' --I get to know this mainly from medieval English genealogy, as of the 19th century: if you had a Classical education, and were that fluent in Latin, and you had direct access to primary sources --specifically legal documents-- it's like, I can't argue with you. At this level, Petrie emphatically included, the methodology was nothing to sneeze at.)

 

I was confused for a minute until I realized that you're talking about the Lion & Sun Disk scarab, not the Ptah amulet! Thank you.

Yes, for all their faults and the colonialism with which they collaborated, the level of erudition of 19th century British (and other European) archaeologists specializing in Egypt and the Ancient Near East, and interpreting hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions (never mind classical languages) was astounding. But, hey, John Stuart Mill was supposedly fluent in reading Latin and ancient Greek by the time he was 3, so none of this was considered unusual.

Also, I edited the four enormous photos in the Ptah amulet post to reduce their size. I'm not sure why they were so huge in the first place.

 

Some questions: Has any of you ever been to the Carlos Museum at Emory? Is it well-known in the area, and does it have a good reputation? Anyway, if anyone was there between 1998 and 2015, perhaps you saw my amulet!

I should mention that the dealer from whom I bought the Ptah amulet wouldn't tell me the name of the previous owner who bought it at Sotheby's in 1998 and then loaned it to the museum at Emory for 17 years, before selling it through Sands of Time. Even though I promised not to disclose the name. He explained that the reason was that the owner is a well-known Egyptologist who prefers not to have anyone more than absolutely necessary know that he's a collector, given the strong anti-collecting sentiment that currently prevails among archaeologists.

 

@DonnaML, when you're confused, red flags should go up. Yes, I was most hit-over-the-head by the amulet, but, Busted, the ensuing comments were bouncing directly off of yours about the scarab.
...And, Yeah, little details like John Stuart Mill...

 

Thanks for posting your ancient glass, Donna. It's always been a real source of fascination for me. That anything so fragile could last for millennia.



And yes, I definitely see a starlit sky in that one.

 

That is a very nice piece.
I have also never been a Scarab collector but still have a few. I travelled through Egypt last month. It was my fourth trip to Egypt and every time it rekindles my interest in Egyptian history and culture and I can't help getting a Scarab or two.

This time we went to Luxor, spend a few nights at the Winter Palace Hotel, then set off to Esna, to take a Dahabyia (sailing boat) to Assuan. We spend 5 days on the boat, visiting the great temples at Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo and some smaller temples at pharaonic quarries etc. It was absolutely amazing.

Then we spend a few nights at the Old Cataract Hotel in Assuan (readers of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile will be familiar with the name). From there we travel further down to Abu Simbel, Philae, visited Elephantine island and Middle Kingdom tombs.

Anyway, here is a Scarab I bought in an auction in Germany, while travelling on the Dahabyia on the Nile. It is rather large at 26mm and made of amethyst.