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Author Topic: Help with authentication of Egyptian amulets  (Read 4253 times)

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Offline renegade3220

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Help with authentication of Egyptian amulets
« on: April 10, 2013, 10:04:10 pm »
Hi group,

I don't have weight or size, but was hoping someone could help with authentication. I am on vacation and my brothers wifes mom has these. She said she got them among other stuff from a friend whose father went to Egypt a lot and always stashed things away to bring back. He passed away and she bought his rock collection and these. She has no clue if they are authentic or not but has been told by a rock dealer (she sells beads and rocks) that he thinks them fake.

Thanks for any help.

Only one pic of one of them and multiples of the other. Taken with my iPhone as good as could.

Offline Russ

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Re: Help with authentication of Egyptian amulets
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2013, 12:14:38 pm »
Hi Folks,
     This is probably not what people want to hear, but here goes...

     I am not a fan of shabti. The ones that interest me are either in museums or far beyond my budget. I would not consider purchasing one of the lower end ones, and probably have far more interest in ancient coins than in those shabti. That being said, I would like to add the following:
     1.  I never saw an authentic shabti with a hole in its head - presumably for suspension - by a "flower child" of the 1960's.
     2.  The ancient Egyptians made faience, frit and various compositions for over 3000 years. They were masters at it and knew how to do it far better than we can today. You rarely see cracks in ancient shabti caused by escaping moisture from the ware and you do here.
     3.  Making shabti was a business, and the makers were no different from manufacturers of today. They probably had their equivalent of lobbyists who worked the temples and courts. At first, one shabti was good enough... but then a rumor spread - one shabti could only do the work of the deceased for a day, then it had to rest. Eventually, the deceased needed a different shabti for each day of the year - 365 shabti per customer instead of one! With so many shabti running around there was bound to be confusion, so overseer (supervisory) shabti were invented. Wow, big bucks! Few could afford beautifuly made shabti any more - as quantity increased, quality decreased. Who cared? The customers seemed to be happy and the makers were making a good profit, everyone was happy.
     4.  Never forget, the ancients were more like us than we would like to admit, and a lot of them were probably smarter than us, too.
     5.  Modern Egypt is the world center for making fakes of Egyptian antiquities and has been for over 100 years... Suppose you are a modern Egyptian who dabbles in antiquities and you acquire a shabti mold - an ancient one. You experiment with local clays and/or mud and use the mold to make some shabti. They don't look bad but they need a glaze and you are smart enough to realize that modern glazes do not look like the ancient ones. So you gather up a pile of worthless (?) broken glazed antiquities and smash them, pulverize them; add water and "pan"the mixture to separate the glaze from the composition. You coat the shabti with the ancient glaze mixture and fire them. Were you clever enough to separate the glazed antiquities you smashed by age and color? Perhaps, perhaps not... but probably good enough to fool a dumb tourist, or escape detection by a so called expert. Was the fire in your kiln oxidation or reduction? How well did you control it? If your items escape detection and sell, who cares?
     6.  Remember, selling fakes to tourists is a high; selling them to professed experts is a "super high."
     7.  Don't forget, dealing in antiquities in Egypt is a crime, so is removing them from the country. If you bought something in Egypt thinking it was ancient, you were probably breaking the law. Who are you going to complain to? And the fakers are laughing - all the way to the bank.
     Sorry.
Russ

Offline Russ

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Re: Help with authentication of Egyptian amulets
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2013, 05:55:24 pm »
Hi Renegade,

     While researching a scarab of Sheshonq I, I came across an interesting, short and illustrated article on fake shabti. I copied and pasted the url to my computer but when I tried to open the page, it would not do so. Perhaps your servers are better than mine.
     The book is Jones, Mark Ed., Paul Craddock and Nicholas Barker. Fake? The Art of Deception. London: British Museum, 1990: pages 149 and 150, at :
https://tinyurl.com/tjokxzw
Russ

Offline renegade3220

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Re: Help with authentication of Egyptian amulets
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2013, 08:45:22 pm »
Thanks all so far.

Offline MrCardon

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Re: Help with authentication of Egyptian amulets
« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2013, 01:02:30 am »
Hello,
Sorry to say, but these are fakes. I've been collecting antiquities for a long time, the glyphs are wrong, the general form is not correct.
Greets

 

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