AN ALEXANDRIAN BONE PLAQUE FRAGMENT ENGRAVED WITH A FIGURE OF A DANCING MAENAD

4TH CENTURY A.D.

Details

AN ALEXANDRIAN BONE PLAQUE FRAGMENT ENGRAVED WITH A FIGURE OF A DANCING MAENAD
4TH CENTURY A.D.
The maenad shown with her head turned back towards the left, her hair worn in a chignon, holding a tambourine in her outstretched left hand, and a fillet over her left arm, floral motifs in the field; a Ptolemaic terracotta head of a female, with tightly waved hair drawn back in several sections, her neck with parallel grooves and terminating in a conical pin for attachment into a socket, 4th-3rd Century B.C.; and a bronze bell surmounted by a suspension ring, decorated around the shoulder with four heads in relief, three of which represent the gods Amun, Bastet and Anubis(?), Ptolemaic period, circa 200 B.C.
3.1/8 in. (8 cm.); 4½ in. (11.5 cm.) and 2 in. (5 cm.) high respectively (3)

Exhibited

Item one: Égypte Romaine, l'autre Égypte, Musée d'Archéologie Méditerranéenne, Marseille, France, 1997.

Sale room notice

Please note that the illustration for this lot has been labelled in error as lot 97.

Lot Essay

PUBLISHED:
Item one: Égypte Romaine, l'autre Égypte, Musées de Marseille, 1997, pp. 104-105, no. 104.

Item one: cf. R. R. Randall, Masterpieces of Ivory from the Walters Art Gallery, Walters Art Gallery, 1985, pp. 90-91, no. 135, pl. 44, for a reconstructed box with similar bone or ivory plaques inlaid with wax showing dancing figures.
Item three: cf. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 72, The Egypt Exploration Society, London, 1986, no. 309, pl. XVII for a similar bell acquired by the British Museum in 1984.

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