SILVER BRACELETS AND EARRING.
GOLD EARRING FROM THE TREASURE OF ZAGAZIG.
II
I will say nothing of the rubbish of his own fabrication. The types are already those of present-day Egypt, and we could easily swear that most of them were manufactured for sale to the fellahs, at most, twenty years ago: earrings in the form of pendants or oblong rings, to the lower part of which eight or ten metal beads are soldered in bunches; rings with flat bezels, ornamented or left plain for a name to be engraved; bracelets formed of a simple reed of silver foil, thinned at each end and covered with a network of lozenges fixed by two or three marks hollowed out by the chisel and lacking elegance, the ends, cut off straight, nearly meet when the piece is finished, but they do not join, and so facilitate the putting of the bracelet on the wrist. It is the honest work of a man who did not spare his material, but only knew just enough of his craft to please easily satisfied customers; the taste of the good people of Bubastis who bought these things was not of a discriminating sort, or they may have found their market only in the people’s quarters. There are much better things of the kind in the Cairo Museum, and if the new-found treasure had only yielded such objects, it would have been at once despatched to the salle de vente for the delight of tourists.
The contrast is striking as soon as we pass to what comes down from the Pharaonic age. Not that it can be placed among the best we know in that kind. The age of Ramses II is already marked by a less sure taste than that of the ages that preceded it, and I cannot compare it with the Dahchour objects nor with those of Queen Ahhotpou. One of the necklaces is the common breastplate of five rows of little tubes in stone and enamel, decorated with a fringe of gold egg-shaped ornaments encrusted with coloured stone. Another necklace, also of gold, with its eight rows of bottle-shaped pendants hanging to little chains of tiny beads, would be somewhat out of keeping with the others if that was its original form, but the parts had been separated, and we remounted them ourselves in order to preserve them with less risk of loss. Five lenticular earrings are formed of two convex gold pellicles closed at the circumference and joined by a border of filigree, stamped in the centre with a rosette, the leaves of which are grouped round a gold or enamel button; a gold tube soldered to the inside and grooved in the furrow of a screw passed through the lobe, and was fastened to an invisible button which, pressed against the flesh, kept the jewel in its place. There was also a bracelet in minute particles of metal and enamel, like those of Ahhotpou and the princesses of Dahchour, but only the clasp has come down to us, a sliding clasp of a most primitive character, with no value except for the gold. The best thing in the series was undoubtedly the pair of gold and lapis lazuli bracelets on which may be read the cartouche name Ousimares—Osymandyas—of Ramses II.
ONE OF RAMSES II’S BRACELETS (OPEN).
ONE OF RAMSES II’S BRACELETS (CLOSED).