Museum Pieces - Papyrus with a winged deity

Papyrus with a winged deity

The strange winged creature standing in front of the serpent in this scene represents several destructive forces, good and bad, inherent in various Egyptian gods. These powers were not normally represented in specific shapes; hence, the unusual being here, like the winged figure in the large stone relief also in this case, is not a single god but a representation of several abstractions. The god Bes was one of the deities associated with this composite being; as a guardian of women and children, he acquired the role of protector of the birth of kings and of the sun, which sprang forth anew each morning from the underworld, where it had been threatened by snakes during the night. The images of the child and the snake on the papyrus reflect these concepts.

Medium: Papyrus, ink
Possible Place Made: Heliopolis, Egypt
Dates: 7th - 4th century B.C.E.
Period: Late Period
Accession Number: 47.218.156a-d
Credit Line: Bequest of Theodora Wilbour from the collection of her father, Charles Edwin Wilbour
Rights Statement: No known copyright restrictions
Caption: Papyrus, 7th - 4th century B.C.E. Papyrus, ink, a: Glass: 7 1/2 x 26 3/8 in. (19 x 67 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Theodora Wilbour from the collection of her father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 47.218.156a-d
Image: detail, 47.218.156a-c_detail_SL3.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
Catalogue Description: Hieratic script

Source:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/60794/Papyrus

Museum Pieces - Faience glaze bowl

Photocredit: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden Leiden

FAIENCE GLAZE BOWL

Beautiful faience drinking bowl depicting a female musician in an erotic theme. The female courtesan, only wearing a headband, waistband and some jewelery, is playing a duckheaded lute. She bears a tattoo of Bes on her thigh, and the overall image is riddled with sex symbolism: from the plants surrounding her, to the figural duck on the lute, to the lotus and perfume cone on her head, to the Bes tattoo itself. The little playful monkey behind her is trying to take her waistband.

1400 - 1300 BC (18th - 19th Dynasty)

Inventorynr.: AD 14
Faience bowl
4,5 x 14 cm


More about faience

‘Egyptian Faience’ is a glazed non-clay ceramic material. Whilst, as the name indicates its wide spread in Egypt, it was also found and manufactured in the rest of the Near East and the Mediterranean. Egyptian faience should not be confused with the earthenware of the Faenze region of Italy, now more commonly known as ‘majolica’.

To the ancient Egyptians, faience was known as "tjehnet" which meant brilliant or dazzling and it was thought to shine with light as the symbol of life, rebirth and immortality. This man made material was probably intended to resemble precious stones like turquoise and lapis lazuli.

Faience objects were very common in ancient Egypt from the Predynastic times until the late Arab period in the fourteenth century AD. Faience was used to produce a wide range of artefacts from beads and small objects to vessels, tiles and architectural elements.

Production of faience in ancient Egypt

Faience technology evolved after complex experimentations during the early dynasties, from applying glaze on carved steatite figures to the exploration and manipulation of quartz paste. The early faience was shaped using stone working methods to make beads, amulets and small objects. Efflorescence as a self glazing method was adopted in addition to the older method of application.

During the Middle Kingdom period, the cementation method of glazing was developed and used; the forming techniques remained simple such as modelling and moulding on a form or core. The faience production flourished in the New Kingdom when a greater diversity of shapes and techniques were introduced that probably derived from the advance of glass technology. These techniques helped improve the faience body by mixing it with frit and powdered glass and this improvement, coupled with the introduction of new designs and ideas, led to enhanced material, colours and shapes. Many of the finest faience objects were produced in this period.

Faience manufacture appears to have declined in quality during the Third Intermediate Period, with a return to the traditional methods and the loss of much of the technical knowledge. The Late Period witnessed a revival in faience production, and a new range of excellent objects and glazing appeared. The Greco-Roman Period shows evidence of close relations between faience production and pottery manufacture which includes throwing faience vessels on the wheel and applying glaze as slurry. The faience link to pottery in the Roman period probably caused a shift towards glazed pottery production and gradually led to the decline of faience.


Sources:

http://www.rmo.nl/collectie/-topstukken-
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/faience/history.htm

Its Reign Was Long, With Nine Lives to Start

‘Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt’ at the Brooklyn Museum

By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: July 25, 2013

(Photocredit: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)
At left, “Face of Sakhmet,’ from around 1390-1292 B.C.; right, “Recumbent Lion,” in limestone, from 305-30 B.C.

If your dream of heaven is eternity spent with the pets you love, “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt” at the Brooklyn Museum is your exhibition. All of its 30 objects, sifted from the museum’s Egyptian collection, are of cats, big and little, feral and tame, celestial and not. Whether cast in bronze or carved in stone, their forms were to outlast time, and so they have.

Although it’s often assumed that the domestication of cats began in Egypt, archaeology suggests that Mesopotamia was the place. And despite the feline presence in religious contexts, Egyptians didn’t worship cats per se, but created gods that had their physical features, their expressive moods and their near-supernatural intelligence.

Ancient Egyptians took the supernatural seriously.

It was, for them, reality. The path between life on earth and life in an earthlike place beyond was continuous. The sun traveled it every day, moving across the sky from east to west, dropping from sight to continue its circuit through the netherworld, then turning up on earth again.

Talisman of Ancient Googly-Eyed God Discovered

by Owen Jarus
By

A newly identified googly-eyed artifact may have been used by the ancient Egyptians to magically protect children and pregnant mothers from evil forces.

CREDIT: Photo courtesy Egypt Centre/Swansea University

Made of faience, a delicate material that contains silica, the pale-green talisman of sorts dates to sometime in the first millennium B.C. It showsthe dwarf god Bes with his tongue sticking out, eyes googly, wearing a crown of feathers. A hole at the top of the face was likely used to suspend it like a bell, while a second hole, used to hold the bell clapper, was apparently drilled into it in antiquity.

Carolyn Graves-Brown, a curator at the Egypt Centre, discovered the artifact in the collection of Woking College, the equivalent of a high school for juniors and seniors. The college has more than 50 little-studied Egyptian artifacts, which were recently lent to the Egypt Centre at Swansea University where they are being studied and documented.

Graves-Brown told LiveScience in an interview that at first she didn't know what the object was. It wasn't until she learned of a similar artifact in the British Museum that she was able to determine that it is a faience Bes bell, one of a very few known to exist.