Egyptian Bone Ram-Headed Boat with Two Deities

LATE PERIOD, 664-332 B.C.

21/8 in. (10.4 grams, 55 mm).

Carved in the round reed boat with ram-headed prow, altar amidships surmounted by a horned sun disc and flanked by two baboons standing in adoration; repaired.

Provenance

From the collection of a gentleman, acquired on the London art market in the 1990s.

Literature

Cf. Reisner, G.A., Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire, Nos.5218-6000 et 12001-12527, Vol. I, Amulets, Cairo, 1907, p.158 (no. CG12263) and pl.XX, for a smaller amulet of a similar format.

Footnotes

This represents a condensed version of a two-dimensional funerary scene of the sun god Re, here represented by the horned disc, in his solar barque, flanked by baboons in an attitude of praise. The boat's ram-headed prow possibly alludes to Re's transformation into a ram during his night-time journey through the Underworld.

CONDITION

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LOT 0025