EGYPTIAN JEWELLERY OF THE XIXTH DYNASTY.
The Louvre.
GOLD PECTORAL INLAID WITH ENAMEL.
The buckle of Psarou must have served to fasten the linen waistband which confined the loin-cloth, or the band which went round the head and kept the head-dress in place. His pectoral is one of the richest that has come down to us. It is fashioned in a plaque of green basalt, polished and sculptured with a precision that is astonishing when we remember how imperfect were the tools at the disposal of the Egyptians. The central scarab is in very high relief against the flat background, and the fidelity of the modelling is marvellous: the smallest details of the head and corslet are rendered with almost scientific truth. The two women who seem to worship it on the right and left are Isis and Nephthys, the two sisters of Osiris. The contours of their bodies are cut in the gold leaf that frames the scarab. Another pectoral of which I give a reproduction is of less delicate workmanship, but the technique presents interesting peculiarities. It has openings cut in it, and the design of the parts is obtained by partitions of a very supple gold, in which are set the scarab and the coloured glass which relieve the uprights and cornice of the naos. The scarab is in lapis lazuli, the dress of the goddesses in brilliant gold, engine-turned to simulate the stripes of the stuff. The mystical meaning of this design would not escape any educated Egyptian. The scarab represents the heart and life of man, where life resides; it is the amulet which ensures to each man, living or dead, the ownership of his heart. That is why it was given to wealthy mummies, if not to all mummies: sometimes it was stuck on to the skin of the corpse with bitumen at the rise of the neck; sometimes it was set in the centre of a pectoral, lost in the thickness of the swathings over the chest. As every Egyptian, when he left this world, was assimilated to Osiris and became Osiris himself, the heart and the scarab passed as the heart and scarab of Osiris, over which Isis and Nephthys watched, as they had watched over Osiris; hence the figures of the two goddesses. They warmed the heart with their hands, they recited the formulas that prevented it from perishing, they kept off evil spirits and the magicians who might have seized it for their dark purposes. Religion provided the artists with a subtle motive of decoration; while they never went far beyond the primary idea, they varied its detail and expression with much skill. The women are sometimes standing, sometimes seated or kneeling; they extend their arms in front of them, or lift them to their foreheads like mourners, or let them hang down in token of grief; the scarab rests on a boat or a lotus flower or an altar, instead of floating in air, as in the jewel of the Serapeum. Comparative study of all the scenes would prove once again the Egyptians’ fertility of imagination and their skill in ringing the changes on the most hackneyed subjects.
PECTORAL OF RAMSES II.
The Louvre.
PECTORAL IN SHAPE OF A HAWK WITH A RAM’s HEAD.