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This group of seven plaques in
turquoise-blue
faience, consist of two sacred cobras,
two djed-
pillars, considered by some scholars as
representations of the spinal column of
Osiris and
by others as reeds bundled together, and
three
cartouches, without inscription, each
crowned by
two ostrich feathers.
The shape of the inlays suggests their
use as
inlays set into decorative wooden
panels. The
repeated motifs suggest that such inlays
composed identical hieroglyphic phrases
which
were decoratively repeated.
The use of inlays has a long tradition
in ancient
Egyptian art, but prior to Dynasty XXVI,
each
such elements were relatively small in
size. The
scale of our ensemble, therefore,
indicates that
these seven inlays were created during
Dynasty
XXVI (664-525 BC), when such large-scale
inlays
were extremely fashionable.-
known series, one example of which was
inscribed with hieroglyphs which seemed
to
indicate a dating within Dynasty XXVII
(525-404
BC) for the group.
The Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt
(notated
Dynasty XXVI, alternatively 26th Dynasty
or
Dynasty 26) was the last native dynasty
to rule
Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525
BC.
The dynasty's reign (664–525 BC) is also
called
the Saite Period after the city of Sais,
where its
pharaohs had their capital, and marks
the
beginning of the Late Period of ancient
Egypt.
[1]References:
See Robert Steven Bianchi and Florence
D.
Friedman in F. D. Friedman [editor],
Gifts of
the Nile. Ancient Egyptian Faience
(Providence 1998), cat. no. 61.
- (X.0181)
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