Let's see your ancient artifacts...

I like all your specimens, your natural gold specimen is "rockin". Here is my Azurite and Malachite:

 

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Try this link and see if it works:
ACTA ACCLA - The Ken Baumheckel Collection of Oil Lamps

If not, try this one:
www.accla.org/actaaccla/oillamps2010.html

In the meantime, here is the summary paragraph for Herodian lamps:


If you search the Internet for "Herodian oil lamps" you will surely get a ton-o-info. But feel free to contact me by private message. I'm out of town right now, but when I get back 'home' I'll take and send a picture of my little quasi-museum of ancient artifacts which includes many lamps and post it on this thread. BTW: It was Ken Baumheckel who gave me the addictive 'bug' of supplementing my ancient coin collection with such artifacts as oil lamps. Frankly, I think I love my artifacts more than my coins. :-o

 

I bought this at a local auction. I sent letters to the British Museum, a few dealers and a professor of Egyptology at Arizona U. All said the same thing, Scarab is real, beads could be real but setting is early 20th century. The dealer on the box Maugid Samida was an Egyptian antiquates dealer in the early to mid 20th century.

 

I'm going to do two replies, I think...

Part 1: Semi-numismatic (scale weights)


Smaller (under 6g) than it looks!

Don't remember why, but I bought this one at auction. I'd just acquired Hendin's scale weights book, so maybe I thought it'd be nice to have a physical object or two. (It is.) But I don't really have a "collection" of them & wouldn't repeat.

Byzantine Bronze or Islamic 20-sided scale weight (10mm, 5.92g), c. 6th-8th cent CE.
Style: "Polyhedron" or “spheroid with bird’s eyes” and "shallow indentation with central 'navel'-like protuberance."
Standard: Quarter Uncia or 4 scripula (of 1.44g) = 2 Dirhams (of 2.89g).
Ref: Hendin p. 226, No. 419, corr.; Holland No. 61, see also No. 35, 36; Holland (2009) Ch. 8, No. 128.
Prov: Agora Auctions 32 (A. de la Fe, NYC [Online], 14 Jul 2015), 52​

Game Piece or Scale Weight (or Other)?

Does this kind of thing look familiar to anyone? (Sorry for the old photos!)

I stopped with "uncleaned" & metal detector lots when I decided they (or some of them) might not be so great for the archaeological record, but I have some interesting bronze odds and ends acquired ~25-15 years ago.

Uncertain Levantine Bronze Object (12mm, 3.65g), with incuse “dots.”

Standard (?): Byzantine "1 Nomismata" weight (cf. Tekin 2016, No. 16 = Anamur 2.29.2003, square, "N," 3.67g); cf. Hellenistic or Roman period drachm standard, maybe consistent w/ certain local Dinar or Dirham standards (?). Could fit any number of the earlier Ancient Near Eastern weight standards going back two thousand years, but those are much rarer than Islamic/Byzantine type.

Style: Doesn’t quite match any in Hendin’s (2007) Ancient Scale Weights or Holland’s (1986) “Islamic Bronze Weights from Caesarea Maritima” (ANS Museum Notes Vol. 31) or (2009) Weights and Weight-Like Objects from Caesarea Maritima.

Prov: Ex from a group of ~700 mostly Roman bronze coins from Lebanon via UAE, c. 2000-2010.​

I've never seen one like this. Maybe a game piece? For something like the Roman Merels/Mill Game or another ancient board game with moving pieces (widespread & popular in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the Bronze Age onward)?

What else can it be? Not pierced, so not jewelry or fishing weight... Too small for projectile? If not a scale-weight, a counting piece or gaming piece is what I keep coming back to.

 

In addition to coins I also collect minerals, fossils, and meteorites. Below is a Stibnite from Herja, Romania.

 

I hunt for arrow points and other artifacts in dry creek beds. I have found a few.

 

Part 2: Family "Museum" / "Stuff" ...

My grandfather (KLJ, c. 1927-2021) grew up near Fort Henry, Tennessee and in the 1930s went around scouring the ground for "treasures."

In this photo I've redacted stuff that was added to the collection later:


He curated and framed a "museum" display of his finds, which consisted of Native American stone tools (dozens of arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, grinding stones, etc.) and military stuff that he attributed to the Civil War (1861-5) and Revolutionary War (c 1775-83).

Some of it possibly from "The Battle of Fort Henry ... February 6, 1862, in Stewart County, Tennessee, during the American Civil War.... the first important victory for the Union and Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Western Theater...."

If I recall correctly, he thought the large iron object was cannon ball shrapnel, possibly Revolutionary War Period. There were two Sieges of Fort Henry, one in 1777 and again in 1782.



These objects weren't curated or conserved to professional standards, so you can see damage to the bullets from his wire-mounted display! (I think the lead bullets were tightly wrapped in the same thin copper wire from the 1930s/1940s until the 1990s.)

My cousin has the best stuff, I think: the Revolutionary War powder horn (like these but not decorated) and bullet casting "scissors mold" like the ones pictured here. We were still like 12 or 13 when it was divided; I think she got 2 or 3 of the best stuff, and I got a few dozen of the smaller pieces.


We have another collection of World War I artifacts from my father's grandfather.

My father has also added to the collection of stone tools.

He was a professor (now retired) and somehow used these in his classroom teaching on early human communication and culture:



He / we have lot of other collections. Not necessarily valuable stuff, but stuff that one of us found interesting.

It's all kind of a single family collection/library, currently dispersed between two homes and safety deposit boxes.

Here is a portion of my father's collection of masks (I think this wall is Central/West Africa). I don't know much about them, but I doubt that most of them are actually old. He's happy to buy replicas, so that's possible (or maybe it's just junk, I really don't know):



Also lots of fossils all around. I haven't photographed any of those.

The best part (aside from the coins, to which it's a close second) is the library, which has been continuously assembled since the 1970s. Not sure how many volumes but it must be in the five figures.

This is maybe 1/4 of it or less:


These two shelves are most of the Ancient coin lit:



I'm 45 so hopefully I'm not going to die right away, but with no kids or siblings, I need to figure out where this stuff will go next.

(We already got rid of a couple thousand books when my parents retired, and it was stressful making sure they wouldn't just end up being recycled!)

 

Very nice collection of African masks from Gabon, Congo, etc.! Of course they are surely not old, they seem made for collectors but by able craftsmen, with the very same techniques as the ones actually used by secret societies. But your masks are just the wooden part. Usually many are supposed to be completed with straw, fabric, leather, feathers or shells. For example you have on the left of your photo 3 Songye masks (central Democratic Republic of Congo) which are usually supporting a long beard like this one (Not my mask) :



This kind of masks is called "chasser la mort" in French ("chase away the death"). There is a male version with a crest, a female version w/o a crest. Seems you have both.

 

Thank you for the great information!

 

This is a bronze ancient Egyptian scourge from an old collection of ancient artifacts. Apparently he was found in a grave and is in perfect condition. I don't know what period it is. But apparently very ancient.

 

Came into possession of this roman javelin head a while back. It also came with the certification the previous owner had. On the top is a small arrowhead from the Greek colony of Olbia.

 

Great collection thanks for the thread