For Customers outside of USA

Gorgeous Genuine Bronze Statuette of Osiris, God of the Underworld.

CLASSIFICATION: Faience Composition Amulet and Faience Composition Bead Necklace. Includes acrylic display stand.

ATTRIBUTION: Ancient Egypt, 27th Dynasty, Xerxes I (?), 486-466 B.C.

SIZE: 63mm height, 24mm breadth, 9mm thickness (dimensions exclude display stand)..

WEIGHT: 15.86 grams (statuette only).

CONDITION: Excellent, almost entirely intact, exceptionally sharp detail preserved. Professionally conserved. Professional cleaning available upon request (reverse electrolysis) so as to restore "original appearance".

DETAIL: A 2,500 year old ancient bronze Egyptian statuette depicting the God Osiris, holding crook and flail, and wearing the Atef crown of Upper Egypt flanked by feathers representative of Busiris, Osiris's cult center in the Delta. Osiris is depicted mummyform, tightly wrapped in bandages. The condition of this piece is superb, almost entirely intact. This is a very detailed depiction of Osiris, a quite artistic and intricate portrayal, even down to the sharply defined facial details. If the lucky purchaser requests, we can have this artifact professional cleaned using the process known as "reverse electrolysis", the standard restorative technique used throughout the institutional world. It would restore the artifact back to something approximating its original appearance, and the gleaming statuette would have the appearance of ancient gold. As it is it has survived the passage of almost twenty-five centuries without cosmetically or structurally significant chips, breaks, or cracks. This exquisitely preserved bronze statuette includes the acrylic display depicted.

HISTORY: One of the greatest civilizations of recorded history was ancient Egypt. For a mere hundred dollars or thereabouts, you can possess a small part of that great civilization in the form of a 2,500 year old amulet. These magical talismans are amongst the most sought after and highly collectible artifacts from ancient Egypt. Religion was very important to the ancient Egyptians, and they worshipped many gods. These gods and goddesses often represented the natural world, such as the sky, earth, sun, or wind. The gods took the form of animals or animal/human figures. The ancient Egyptians wore amulets, small representations of these gods, as magical charms to ward off danger. They believed that these amulets, or talismans, would not only protect them in life, but in death as well, and would endow the individual wearing them with magical powers and capabilities.

While religious beliefs in ancient Egypt played a very important role in life, they played an even larger role in death. The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead prescribed 104 different types of amulets be buried with the mummy in order to protect the deceased on his or her journey into the afterlife. Typically pinned to or wrapped within their burial shroud, it was not uncommon to find even thousands of amulets in the possession of the mummified remains of more prominent members of that ancient civilization. Typically when mummifying the deceased, there could be as many as 80 layers of linen, and it was not unusual to place at least one amulet representation of each of the more significant deities within each layer.

Bronze amulets and statuettes were relatively uncommon and rare in ancient Egypt prior to the Hellenistic Period. Amulets were made in many sizes and of many materials, including terracotta, wood, stone (especially steatite or "soapstone"), bronze, silver, gold, occasionally precious gemstones, but most often of "faience". Faience was the forerunner of modern glass, and was manufactured by the Egyptians as far back as 4000 B.C. Faience is composed of ground quartz and sand together with a coloring agent. Although faience was made in many different colors, most often the coloring agent used was copper ore, which would impart a turquoise blue or turquoise green color. Made into a paste, the mixture of silica and coloring agent(s) it was pressed into molds, and then fired in an oven. When baked, the quartz would migrate as a glaze to the surface of the amulet within the mold. When the mold was opened, the amulet would have a smooth, glassy surface. If colored with copper ore, the resulting product would typically be a shade between deep cobalt blue and pale emerald or jade green. The manufacture of amulets and the application of the magic spells for the benefit of the deceased, were almost always overseen by Egyptian priests.

With respect to this particular form of amulet, the ancient Egyptians considered Osiris to be their supreme god and judge of the dead. Osiris was the symbol of resurrection and eternal life, as well as the provider of fertility and prosperity to the living. Osiris was generally depicted as a bearded man wearing white mummy wrappings, a white atef crown representing Upper Egypt, and red feathers representative of Busiris, Osiris's cult center in the Delta. Osiris was almost always depicted holding the symbols of supreme power, the flail and crook. Osiris's skin was usually represented as either green to represent vegetation, or red to represent the earth. Often Osiris was depicted wearing a menat, a heavy beaded necklace with a crescent shaped front and a counter piece at the rear. The menat was regarded as a symbol of rebirth.

Osiris was, in ancient Egyptian mythology, the son of Geb and Nut. His siblings included Isis, Nephthys, Seth, and Horus ("Haroeris the Elder", husband of Hathor). According to ancient Egyptian mythology Osiris married his sister Isis, and fathered Horus ("Harpokrates the Younger"). With his other sister Nepthys, Osiris fathered Anubis. Osiris was principally worshipped as the Egyptian god of the underworld, although he was also worshipped as a fertility, resurrection, and vegetation god. His sister, Isis, to whom he was married, was considered a sky goddess. His son, whom he fathered with Isis, Horus, was considered the god of sky, and protector of the dead.

The worship of Osiris was prevalent in the most ancient of Egyptian civilization. The oldest religious texts of ancient Egypt refer to Osiris as the great god of the dead, and suggest that he once possessed human form and lived upon earth. According to these texts, Osiris ruled over a kingdom of new life after death, and was willing to admit all those who had died. The provisions for admission were that the departed had lived a good and correct life upon earth, and had been buried with the appropriate ceremonies under the protection of certain amulets, and with proper recital of certain "divine words" and words of power. Osiris was in respect to the dead and the Underworld what Ra, the supreme Sun God, was to the living and to this world. In some ancient religious texts some passages Osiris is referred to simply as "God," without the addition of any name. No other god of the Egyptians alluded to thusly, ever occupied such an exalted position, or was thought to possess his peculiar attributes.

Bronze is the name given to a wide range of alloys of copper, typically mixed in ancient times with zinc or tin. The Bronze Age followed the Neolithic, and as the name implies, saw the production of bronze tools, weapons and armor which were either hard or more durable than their stone predecessors. Traditionally archaeology has maintained that the earlier bronze was produced by the Maikop, a proto-Indo-European, proto-Celtic culture of Caucasus prehistory around 3500 B.C. Recent evidence however suggests that the smelting of bronze might be as much as several thousand years older. Shortly after the emergence of bronze technology in the Caucasus region, bronze technology emerged in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean), Anatolia (Turkey) and the Iranian Plateau. By the late fourth to early third millennium B.C. many Bronze Age Cultures had emerged. Some of the more notable were the Celtic cultures of Middle Europe stretching from Hungary to Poland and Germany, including the Urnfield, Lusatian, and (Iron Age Transitional) Hallstatt Cultures.

The Shang in ancient China also developed a significant Bronze Age culture, noted for large bronze burial urns. Britain's Bronze Age cultures included the Beaker, Wessex, Deverl, and Rimbury. Cornwall was the principle source of tin not only for Britain but exported throughout the Mediterranean, and copper was produced from the Great Orme mine in North Wales. Though much of the raw minerals may have come from Britain (and to a lesser extent Spain), it was the Aegean world which controlled the trade in bronze. The great seafaring Minoan Empire appears to have controlled, coordinated, and defended the Bronze Age trade. Tin and charcoal were imported into Cyprus, where locally mined copper was mined and alloyed with the tin from Britain. It appears that the Bronze Age collapsed with the Minoan Empire, to be replaced by a Dark Age and the eventual rise of the Iron Age Myceneans. Evidence suggests that the precipitating event might have been the eruption of Thera and the ensuing tsunami, which was only about 40 miles north of Crete, the capital of the Minoan empire.

It is known that the bread-basket of the Minoan empire, the area north of the Black Sea lost population, and thereafter many Minoan colony/client-states lost large populations to extreme famines or pestilence. Thus with the end to the shipping of tin throughout the Mediterranean the Bronze Age trade network is believed to have failed, and the end of the Bronze Age and the rise of the Iron age is normally associated with the disturbances created by large population movements in the 12th century B.C. The end of the Bronze Age saw the emergency of new technologies and civilizations which heralded the new Iron Age. Although iron was in many respects much inferior to bronze (steel was still thousands of years away), iron had the advantage that it could be produced using local resources during the dark ages that followed the Minoan collapse. Bronze also resists corrosion and metal fatigue better than iron. Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, but for many purposes the weaker iron was sufficiently strong to serve in its place. As an example, Roman officers were equipped with bronze swords while foot soldiers had to make do with iron blades.

SHIPPING: These antiquities come from a number of collections which by and large originated here in Eastern Europe. As well, additional specimens are occasionally acquired from other institutions and dealers, principally in Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. All of these artifacts are now in the United States and are available for immediate delivery via U.S. Mail. All purchases are backed by an unlimited guarantee of satisfaction and authenticity. If for any reason you are not entirely satisfied with your purchase, you may return it for a complete and immediate refund of your entire purchase price. A certificate of authenticity (COA) is available upon request.

Our order fulfillment center near Seattle, Washington will ship your purchase within one business day of receipt of your personal check or money order. If you wish to pay electronically, we accept both PayPal and BidPay. However we ask that you PLEASE WAIT before remitting until we have mutually agreed upon method of shipment and shipping charges and you understand our PayPal limitations and policies (stated here). We will ship within one business day of our receipt of your electronic remittance.

A certificate of authenticity (COA) is available upon request. We prefer your personal check or money order over any other form of payment - and we will ship immediately upon receipt of your check (no "holds"). Please see our "ADDITIONAL TERMS OF SALE."