Romano-Egyptian Bronze Harpocrates and Sphinx Amulet Group, 4 Pendants

Egypt, Romano-Egyptian. A group of four cast bronze miniature amulets. Three are standing figures with the hand raised toward the mouth, the gesture identifying them as Harpocrates, the Greek and Roman form of the child Horus, invoked as a protective deity of the young and of renewal; the finger-to-lips pose, an Egyptian convention for childhood, was later read as an injunction to silence. The fourth is a recumbent sphinx form with a lateral suspension hole. Three retain integral suspension loops to wear as protective charms. Harpocrates, the Greek rendering of Egyptian Har-pa-khered ("Horus the Child"), was among the most widely reproduced amuletic figures of the first millennium BCE. He is conventionally shown nude, with the sidelock of youth and one finger lifted to the mouth, a gesture Greek and Roman viewers later misread as an injunction to silence and adopted as the emblem of secrecy. In Egypt the meaning was healing: the child god who survived the assaults of Set became the guarantor of survival for the amulet's wearer. The sphinx, by contrast, carries royal rather than medical force. A lion's body governed by a human head, it fuses the ferocity of the desert predator with the ordering intelligence of the king, and in amuletic miniature it served as a compact guardian at thresholds both bodily and tomb-bound. Item # 204632

Estimate:$250

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