Faince Amulet Pectoral Featuring a Winged Scarab and the Four Sons of Horus

Each Individual Piece Has Been Encased in a Cartier Gold Setting. The Parts Are All Linked Together to Form the Pectoral. Faience, which dates back to pre-dynastic times, of at least 5,000 years, is a glasslike non-clay substance made of materials common to Egypt: ground quartz, crushed quartz pebbles, flint, a soluble salt-like baking soda, lime and ground copper, which provided the characteristic color. The dried objects went into kilns looking pale and colorless but emerged a sparkling "Egyptian blue." Called tjehnet by the ancient Egyptians, meaning that which is brilliant or scintillating, faience was thought to be filled with the undying light of the sun, moon and stars and was symbolic of rebirth. In the cultural renaissance of the 26th Dynasty, also known as the Saite Period, a green, the color of the Nile and evocative of the verdant landscape in springtime, was particularly popular. By far the most important amulet in Ancient Egypt was the scarab, symbolically as sacred to the Egyptians as the cross is to Christians. Based upon the dung beetle, this sacred creature forms a ball of dung around its semen and rolls it over the sand, creating a larger ball. Eventually, the scarab drops the excrement ball into its burrow where the female lays her eggs on the ground and covers them with the ball. In turn, the larvae consume the ball and emerge in the following days from the ground as if miraculously reborn. In the life cycle of the beetle, the Ancient Egyptians envisioned a microcosm of the daily rebirth of the sun. They imagined the ancient sun god Khepri was a great scarab beetle rolling the sun across the heavens. The scarab also became a symbol of the enduring human soul as well, hence its frequent appearance in funerary art. The holes in this faience pectoral reveal that it was originally sewn onto the bandages of a mummy, presumably over the chest region. In this funerary context, the desire of the deceased to be reborn in the afterlife was symbolized by the life cycle of the beetle, echoing the daily rebirth of the sun. The luminous blue hue of the faience, the same blue as the life-giving sea, further reinforces the concept or rebirth. The wings of the scarab, with the incised feathers, appear to resemble those of a hawk or falcon more than they do those of a beetle. However, the falcon was associated with the sun and the sky god Horus, who appears in the form of the two falcon headed terminals crowned by the sun disk that are mounted above the tips of the wings, thus further expanding the theme of the solar cycle and rebirth. The four deity figures, the Sons of Horus, were symbolic of four major organs that were traditionally removed during the embalming process. Human-headed Imsety, symbolizing the liver. and jackal-headed Duamutef, the stomach, both face right while falcon-headed Qebhsenuef, the intestines, and baboon-headed Hapy, the lungs, both face left, all carrying a long folded cloth in their hands. These deities also appear in the form of canopic jars, in which the removed viscera were contained. The combination of such diverse elements united together in a work of art in order to symbolize a complex philosophy of life and death is characteristic of Ancient Egyptian art. - (X.0117)