One of the more recent arrivals at Phoenix Ancient Art, owned by Hicham Aboutaam and Ali Aboutaam, is the Egyptian Amulet of the Goddess Bastet. This amulet is in an excellent state of preservation and is from the 3rd Intermediary Period, from around the 8th-7th century B.C. in Egypt. The amulet is complete, and it has retained its original intense blue color.
Her throne was made with a technique that was very popular at the end of the New Kingdom and into the beginning of the first millennium B.C. The faience was first cast and the openwork was then created by cutting away unwanted elements with a knife. While the amulet is quite small in size, the work’s quality is excellent and a number of the anatomical details have been rendered with great precision.
The goddess Bastet was quite popular at the end of the Bronze Age and, as was quite common in Egyptian art, the figure has the body of a human and the head of an animal. Bastet is considered a mild mannered, sweeter version of the dangerous goddess Sekhmet. She is the patron of the priestly doctors of Sekhmet and she protected women in childbirth and children.
