Wire technology is an essential part of goldworking, especially for jewelry For example, wires were used to produce surface decoration, often in conjunction with granulation work, and they were applied using the same colloidal hard soldering method. The wires could be twisted, braided, or woven to make chains, and then used structurally to join individual components.
The wires themselves were made from tightly twisted metal strips or rods or from square section rods that were hammered to attain roundness. The yards of wire that make up the strap chain fragment were produced using the former method; the wires on the electrum uraeus pendant were hammered. In Macedonian, Ptolemaic , and Roman times, jewelry made elsewhere circulated in Egypt, and local production reflects these and other foreign influences.
One foreign practice in jewelry design introduced into Egypt during the Roman Period was the incorporation of gold coins Schorsch, Deborah. Turnhout: Brepols, Gold of the Pharaohs. Visiting The Met? Child's bracelet. Pendant in the Shape of an Uraeus. Necklace of Gold Ball Beads. Model collar of Hapiankhtifi.
Cylindrical pendant. However, one element available to every Egyptian - from the youngest child to oldest priest, from the poorest farmer to pharaoh - was jewelry. From the predynastic through Roman times, jewelry was made, worn, offered, gifted, buried, stolen, appreciated and lost across genders, generations and classes. Egyptians adorned themselves in a variety of embellishments including rings, earrings, bracelets, pectorals, necklaces, crowns, girdles and amulets.
Broad collar of Nefer Amulets, ca. Because jewelry was so universal and pervasive we can learn a vast amount from studying even a single bead. Yet much of the ancient jewelry pieces in modern collections, especially those gathered in the 19th and early 20th centuries, have little to no recorded archaeological context — meaning they lack critical information for full understanding.
These pieces also have often been trivialized as purely aesthetic rather than informative, marginalizing the potential and importance of studying jewelry. Instead of being dismissed, jewelry should be used as scholarly objects to better understand ancient Egypt. Burial trends, ritual practices, manufacturing skills and resource and material availability are just a few avenues to explore through jewelry. Such study, in turn, can provide essential information on a range of topics, including trade, gender, class, economics, military power and political authority.
Cowrie shell girdle of Sithathoryunet, c. For Egyptian jewelry, styles, material choices, fabrication techniques and even object type and decorative meaning changed over time.
Gemstones such as lapis and turquoise were imported and thus often less available during unstable political periods. Meanwhile, some locally available materials were popular only during certain periods: Purple amethyst was the rage during the Middle Kingdom ca.
Most Egyptians wore some type of jewelry during their lifetimes, and almost every Egyptian was buried with some form of adornment. The materials chosen and the quality of workmanship often marked the status of the owner or wearer.
The elaborate gold masks and inlaid pectorals of the 21st and 22nd-dynasty kings of Tanis ca. Some simpler objects such as single strung barrel-shaped carnelian swr. Limestone wall painting in two registers depicting the activities of jewelry-makers and precious-metal workers Photo: British Museum.
This dual system of afterlife beliefs, relating to both solar and Osirian rebirth, was to characterise burial through the rest of ancient Egyptian history. The tomb itself was intended help magically transform the dead into a semi-divine being like Osiris. Pyramids and royal tombs even had associated temples in which the king would be worshipped as a god after his death.
Wealthy individuals had a decorated tomb-chapel — a public part of the tomb above ground, separate from the actual burial chambers — where relatives could visit to remember the deceased, and priests could make offerings and recite prayers. In prehistoric burials, bodies were sometimes preserved naturally through the dry heat of the desert sand. The earliest active attempts to preserve human bodies involved wrapping the dead in resin-soaked linen, but the first real mummification took place during the pyramid age, or Old Kingdom c— BC.
The body was dried using natron, a naturally occurring mixture of salts, and wrapped in linen. Sometimes the internal organs, the parts most likely to decay, were removed and mummified separately. During the Middle Kingdom c— BC , the funerary spells originally written inside royal pyramids began to appear on the coffins of priests and high officials. God of the afterlife Osiris also grew in importance.
Rectangular coffins were slowly replaced by anthropoid coffins that depicted the deceased holding royal regalia, transformed into Osiris to ensure their resurrection. Wooden models depicting food and craft production were initially introduced to burials to magically provide for the dead and transfer their wealth and status into the afterlife. These developed into funerary figurines called shabtis , initially intended to act as a substitute for the deceased, in case they were called up by conscription to perform physical labour in the afterlife.
A major change in royal burial came In around BC, after a period of foreign occupation, when Egypt was reunified under the rule of a king from Thebes. Burial traditions in Thebes favoured rock-cut tombs in the cliffs on the west bank of the Nile, so royal pyramids were abandoned in favour of tombs hidden in the Valley of the Kings.
The civilisation was extremely wealthy; a fact reflected in the hundreds of tombs constructed by officials opposite the capital city of Thebes. Thus concern for the world of the dead, the West, is linked up with the feeding of the gods. But Egyptian religion was altogether too integral a part of national culture to have permitted such a radical change. Indeed the duality of solar and chthonic was a major theme not only of Egyptian funerary religion but also temple religion.
There were rooms in temples devoted to the solar cult as well as chambers relating to the revivification of the mummified Osiris. Sokar in the hymn is a chthonic deity. Opened are the doors of the underworld, 0 Sokar, While Re is in the sky rejuvenated. Atum appears in glory while beholding you. Dazzling are you in the horizon. You have filled the Two Lands with your beauty like the sky, radiant with glaze. Inasmuch as you have been reborn as the solar disk in the sky. To St.
Hippolytus, who may have hailed from Egypt, is ascribed an Easter hymn of the early third century A. The gates of heaven are opened. God has shown himself man, And man has gone up a God. The people of the world below have risen from the dead, bringing good news Migne ; Hamman Here in the context of an Easter Mass, human time pales into insignificance and irrelevance to the believer, for the great event is totally present and now. So too with the ancient Egyptians, mummification and burial, seen as religious acts, implied a transcendence into the realm of divine time through association with Osiris and Re.
Not every aspect of the afterlife was entirely pleasant, and difficulties might be encountered in passing through the nether-world, whose gateways were guarded by fierce demons. Through magical spells the dead person sought to appease the demons, claiming knowledge of their names to gain access.
By depositing with the dead a copy of the judgment scene it would seem that the Egyptian was by magical means securing an automatic laissez-passer into the realm of Osiris. Such deception of the divine judges of the netherworld might seem most brazen. Yet the Book of the Dead was in use among even the highest officials. In this respect the deceased shared in the triumphant vindication that had originally been accorded Osiris.
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