Egyptian Bronze Oxyrhynchus Fish Figure

A glass spherical bead with three millefiori faces in the median dark blue band. 2.9 grams, 15 mm



Acquired 1969-1999. London collection of the late S.M., thence by descent.

A limestone figure modelled in the half-round, lying naked on a rectangular bed, executed with semi-naturalistic anatomical detailing, voluminous coiffed hair and painted necklace, armbands and distinctive ornamental girdle at the waist; accompanied by a custom-made display stand. 109 grams total, 11.5 cm including stand

Fine condition.

with Secret Eye Gallery, New York City, 1977. with Arte Primitivo, New York, USA, 8 October, 2003, lot 66. Private collection of Professor Kenneth Graham, London, UK. Accompanied by an original Arte Primitivo catalogue page. Accompanied by a scholarly note by Egyptologist Paul Whelan.

This syncretic figure combines the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Greek goddess Aphrodite, a deity popular from the 3rd century B.C. into the Roman Period, who embodied aspects of fertility, marriage, and childbirth.

A glazed composition shabti fragment representing the head of a bull surmounted by a sun-disc between its horns, wearing a lappet wig and with human arms crossed over the chest; the missing lower portion continued the shape of a mummiform human body; the back of the figure flat and bearing faint traces of inscription, the opening begins with a common shabti introduction which appears to be followed (as would be expected) by the name of syncretic deity Osiris Apis. 34 grams, 60 mm



Acquired early 1990s. Ex private American collection; thence by descent. Private collection since 1998. Accompanied by a scholarly note by Egyptologist Paul Whelan.

The figure comes from the catacombs at Saqqara where the sacred Apis bulls were buried, known today as the Serapeum. The Apis bull was associated principally with the gods Ptah, patron deity of Memphis, and Osiris, and when one died it was afforded the kind of lavish burial befitting a pharaoh. All bull-headed shabtis date to the 19th and 20th Dynasties and were left as offerings beside the huge granite sarcophagi of the deified bulls. These shabtis were among hundreds of objects recovered from the catacombs by Auguste Mariette during his excavations there between 1850-1853. The Musée du Louvre in Paris holds the largest collection of artefacts from the Serapeum outside Egypt, including around 120 Apis shabtis. They reveal that the this fragment with its sun-disc is from a rare variant of this shabti type; just 5 of the Louvre examples have sun-discs (S 1823, N 5234 51-54), the remaining shabtis have a bull’s head with short stubby horns and no sun-disc.