One of the ancient
Egyptian antiquities which has captivated me recently is an absolutely exquisite
Egyptian gold Bastet
amulet dating from the
New Kingdom Period, c. 1550-1070 BC. It’s infinitesimally small and features a seated cat that is barely a centimetre high. It’s just half a gram of gold in
weight. It
still has black tar-like traces of bitumen embalming fluid on it perhaps from being buried with a mummy. Amazingly, the
amulet can stand on its integral flat base on a tabletop unlike modern pendants.
Bastet was the
Egyptian cat goddess of the
home, domesticity, women's secrets, cats,
fertility, and childbirth. She protected the
home from evil spirits and disease, especially diseases associated with women and children. The gold
amulets are far too small to be showcased which is why they’re being sold as museum rejects from the 1920s. Wealthy industrialists were inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the 1920s to become amateur collectors of
Egyptian antiquities. The gold cat
amulets might have been sold to well-off pilgrims worshipping at the Temple of Bubastis.
I’m totally baffled how ancient
Egyptian artisans could create anything so infinitesimally small and anatomically perfect without the aid of a magnifying lens. Modern goldsmiths would struggle to create such tiny gold objects even with a microscope. Regrettably, I
had to give the beautiful gold Bastet
amulet a miss after I realised that there was no place where I would be able to store such a tiny object without losing it. I sometimes wonder if what Egyptologists think of as genuine
Egyptian antiquities might be cleverly contrived
fakes from the 1920s. The artistry of some
Egyptian antiquities is truly astounding.