Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
The bell is hemispherical, with two sets of horizontal grooves encircling the bell’s mantle. It is cast with a circular, double-stranded ring-handle that has a stirrup-like thickening at the top. This bell was excavated, alongside other bells, in a horse burial associated with a human grave at Gammai on the eastern side of the Nile in Nubia, at the Second Cataract; it clearly served as a horse-bell (1). With its characteristic handle shape, it belongs to a bell type common in the Nubian Ballana Culture and found associated with horses and camels, for example at Quostol, c. 30 miles north of Gammai (2). It is one of two bells in the Harvard Art Museums from Gammai (the other is 1924.75.B)
A large variety of shapes of copper alloy bells are known from Nubia and also from Egypt in earlier periods, at least since Dynasty 23; they served as amulets (especially for children) and animal bells, votive offerings, and musical or signal instruments in sacred contexts (3). Rare, elaborately-decorated examples from Meroe depict enemies in fetters (4), while copper alloy bowls from post-Meroitic el-Hobagi have miniature bells attached to the rim (5). The bells appear to have served a variety of purposes, notably in a cultic context and as amulets for humans and animals. Their use as part of horse harnesses—usually of rulers’ horses—appears to be a particular feature of the Nubian post-Meroitic and Ballana Cultures that survived into the medieval period (6).
NOTES:
1. The bell was found in J.4, one of two pits associated with the burial in Mound J, each containing the bones of a horse. It held a total of five copper alloy bells with iron clappers, including four hemispherical bells; see O. Bates and D. Dunham, “Excavations at Gammai,” in Varia Africana 4, eds. E. A. Hooton and N. I. Bates, Harvard African Studies 8 (Cambridge, MA, 1927) 1-123, esp. 84, nos. J.4.1-3 and 5 (these are now in three institutions: Harvard Art Museums, inv. no. 1924.75.A [this bell]; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 24.371; and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, inv. no. 24-24-50/B4160 [2 bells]). There was also one bell of conical shape and oval section, J.4.4 (now Boston Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 24.370).
2. W. B. Emery and L. P. Kirwan, The Royal Tombs of Ballana and Quostol (Cairo, 1938) 262-67; and H. Hickmann, Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire: Instruments de musique (Cairo, 1949) 37-68. Particularly similar to the Harvard Art Museums bells is Cairo C.G. 69591, from Quostol; see ibid., 61, no. 69591, pl. 34.A.
3. H. Hickmann, “Glocken A. Altertum,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart 5, ed. F. Blume (Kassel, 1956) 267-76; and id., “Zur Geschichte der altägyptischen Glocken,” Musik und Kirche 30.2 (1951): 3-19.
4. T. Kendall, Kush: Lost Kingdom of the Nile, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, 1982) 53-55, no. 77; and A. Hermann, “Magische Glocken aus Meroë,” Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 93 (1966): 79-89.
5. D. Wildung, ed., Sudan: Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile, exh. cat., Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Kunsthalle der Hypo-Stiftung, Munich (New York, 1997) 385-88, nos. 458 and 465.
6. Compare D. Welsby, The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia (London, 2002) 81; id. and C. M. Daniels, eds., Soba: Archaeological Research at a Mediaeval Capital on the Blue Nile (London, 1991) 127-28, no. 7.
Alexandra C. Villing
