06 | Necklace

This necklace is imbued with symbolic meaning. Look closely to see the glint of golden, spherical beads.

Believed to be the flesh of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, gold was highly prized, desired and admired.

The ancient Egyptians were envied across the Mediterranean Sea and Western Asia for their access to gold-mining regions that stretched across the desert east of Thebes and south into Nubia, an area covering parts of southern Egypt and present-day northern Sudan.

As one ruler of the Mitannian kingdom in Northern Mesopotamia wrote to the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III, ‘My brother, pray send gold in very great quantities. In the land of my brother is not gold as the dust upon the ground?’

Egyptian craftspeople were celebrated for their gold-working traditions.

They melted and alloyed gold, shaped it into ingots, hammered it into sheets and cut and twisted it to produce objects – large and small – including the beads of this necklace.

Between the gold beads, you can see the orange reddish, almost translucent beads of carnelian.

It was a gemstone frequently used by the Egyptians, possibly prized for its vibrant colour.

On either side of the main pendant, you can see two more types of gemstones.

Their translucent violet colour distinguishes them as the amethyst stone, which the ancient Egyptians also sourced from the desert.

The amethysts frame the necklace’s centrepiece: a large brown opaque stone carved in the shape of a ram’s head.

The ram was the symbol of Amun, god of the air and ruler of the gods. His name means ‘the hidden one’.

In one creation story, Amun created himself and then everything in the universe.

He was visible and invisible, male and female, mysterious of form and a protector of the pharaoh.

Amun’s main place of worship was the temple of Karnak at Thebes, where he was venerated with his partner, the vulture goddess Mut, and their son Khonsu, god of the moon and protector of travel.

Khonsu was sometimes represented by the crescent and a lunar disc and the two larger glass beads on this necklace take this shape.

The necklace also has two other distinctive pieces.

One is the Eye of Horus or the ‘wadjet’, a symbol of protection worn by the living and the dead.

The other is an amuletic scarab decorated with a plant motif.

Looking at this necklace, you can see how the beads, pendant and amulets harmonise together in colour and shape to create an elegant whole.

Whether this necklace was created as it is, or augmented later by an antiques dealer, we do not know, but what we do know is that such jewellery was treasured by the ancient Egyptians.

Old and young, rich, and poor – most Egyptians wore jewellery that reflected their status and wealth.

As with this necklace, they could also include stones, colours and shapes permeated with meaning and with special significance to the wearer.