- Description
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Solid-cast amuletic figure of the funerary god Osiris in copper alloy; depicted as mummiform and standing on a small rectangular base; holding against his chest the sceptre Heka and the flail Nekhekh, hands side by side; wearing the Atef crown, composed of the white crown flanked by two ostrich feathers and with uraeus on front; quide crudely made; suspension loop at the back behind the shoulder (slightly broken) and another one welded at the front right-hand corner of the base; tang beneath base; almost complete and corroded.
- Production date
- 664 BC - 332 BC
- Dimensions
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Height: 12 centimetres
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Width: 3.10 centimetres
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Depth: 1.80 centimetres
- Curator's comments
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Object owned and held by McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock. This record is included in the British Museum database as part of the Museum’s Naukratis Project, a research collaboration that aims to virtually re-unite finds from the ancient port city of Naukratis, now distributed over 80 museums worldwide.
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The findspot and year are not recorded in the museum's register, but a modern label gives 1885 as excavation year.
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The early excavations at Naukratis provided many bronze figures of Osiris. Some of them originated from a cache of bronzes found in a building located in the southern part of the city: it contained nineteen statuettes of Osiris, twelve of which were complete (Petrie 1886, 41-42). Osiris is by far the most represented deity in the corpus of bronze figures from Naukratis (Masson forthcoming b).
Bronzes representing Osiris, as well as the other members of the Osirian triad - Isis and Harpokrates, are conspicuous in Late Period and Ptolemaic bronze votive deposits all over Egypt (see for example the large caches from North Saqqara where members of the Osirian triad represent three quarter of the bronze figures: Emery 1970, 6). The Osirian cult is important in the saite nome, and particularly in Sais itself as stressed by K. Weiss (Weiss 2012, 445), but also on a more local scale (Masson 2015).
This figure belongs to the type 81 in the typology of bronzes by K. Weiss, a type that is found on various sites of the Delta, such as Sais, Herakleion, Bubastis, Athribis, Saqqara, Memphis, Tanis, and notably in Late Period contexts (Weiss 2012, 171-172, 627-633, Pl. 22b-i, Typ 81).
With its tang beneath the base and its two loops - one in the back of Osiris and one on the side of the base, this figure could have had multiple uses, with different ways to wear it (?) or to display it.
Petrie, W. M. F. 1886, Naukratis. Part I., 1884-5 (Third Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund), London.
Masson, A. 2015, ‘Cult and Trade. A reflexion on Egyptian metal offerings from Naukratis’, in D. Robinson and F. Goddio (eds), Thonis Heracleion in Context, Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology Monograph 8, Oxford, 71-88.
Masson, A. forthcoming b, ‘Naukratis: Egyptian offerings in context’, in M. Bergeron and A. Masson (eds), Naukratis in Context II: Cults, Sanctuaries and Offerings. Proceedings of the Second Naukratis Project Workshop held at the British Museum, 22nd – 23rd June 2013.
Weiss, K. 2012, Ägyptische Tier- und Götterbronzen aus Unterägypten : Untersuchungen zu Typus, Ikonographie und Funktion sowie der Bedeutung innerhalb der Kulturkontakte zu Griechenland, Ägypten und Altes Testament 81.
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Relatively fair, though corroded
- Acquisition date
- 1888
- Department
- External
- Additional IDs
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Miscellaneous number: 1987.378 (Accession Number)