1992.256.91: Ibex with Hand Amulet

Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
The erect animal stands alertly on its sloping base, which is punched with six holes, two on each side, one in front, and one in back. Although it lacks the characteristic beard of the goat family, it bears the backswept horns of the wild ibex. The legs are held close together, the hind ones slightly bent and the rump raised to create an arching back that conveys the agility and grace of these mountain leapers. Rounded modeling produces a full belly, further supplementing the fluid lines. Each haunch and shoulder displays an excised dot within an incised circle, with a similar marking for the eyes. The tail is broken; the ill-defined horns form a V-shape as they rise up from the front of the head. The muzzle sports a blunted nose, and the chest overhangs the front legs to form a small “shelf.” The rectangular base is hollow. The back rises up slightly at its juncture with the neck and is pierced. From this, a bronze wire links the animal to an amulet in the form of an open hand.

A number of such bronze ibexes (identified by the excavator as gazelles) were recovered from the late antique site of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates River in Syria (1). Two specimens, each found in women’s burials in the necropolis, display twisted wire links dangling from the holes in the base (2), from which bells were suspended. The bronzes are difficult to date more precisely than the period of the city’s greatest prosperity: the first century BCE through the second century CE. A closely comparable bronze was found much farther afield at the provincial Roman capital of Augusta Raurica (present-day Augst, situated near Basel, Switzerland), also dating from the end of the first century BCE through the second century CE (3). The hand may or may not have been originally intended to accompany the animal None of the Dura-Europos examples nor the Augusta Raurica piece have attached hand amulets, although they are equipped with suspension loops on their backs that occasionally preserve ancient chain links. Nonetheless, unpierced faience hand amulets do occur in a few Dura-Europos burials, including one instance from the same tomb as a bronze ibex (4). Small amulets in the form of a hand, sometimes clenched in a fist (mano fica) or with particular finger arrangements (for example, the “hand of Sabazios”), were popular during this time in a range of cultures and regions and are therefore difficult to interpret (5). Those with an open hand have been associated with the gesture of benediction.

NOTES:

1. N. P. Toll, The Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, Preliminary Report of the Ninth Season of Work, 1935-1936, Pt. 2: The Necropolis, eds. M. I. Rostovtzeff et al. (New Haven, 1946) 52 and 73-74, and 79, Tombs 24.2 and 40, pls. 45 and 54; and M. I. Rostovtzeff, ed., The Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season of Work, October 1931 – March 1932 (New Haven, 1934) 85, pl. 23.1.

2. Rostovtzeff 1946 (supra 1) 121.

3. The Augst example (now in the Antiken Museum Basel, inv. no. 07.1262) exhibits the same upright posture with bent hind legs and arrangement of the ear and horns; it also has pierced holes through the back and the triangularly sloping base. The Augst bronze is 3.9 cm high, roughly the same size as the Harvard piece. It has a protrusion from the rear quarters, probably the tail as seen in the Dura-Europos pieces, and its rougher surface shows no evidence of circular markings. See A. Kaufmann-Heinimann, Die Römischen Bronzen der Schweiz 1: Augst und das Gebeit der Colonia Augusta Raurica (Mainz, 1977) no. 98.

4. Rostovtzeff 1946 (supra 1) 126-27, pls. 46 and 50.

5. See, for example, L. Hansmann and L. Kriss-Rettenbeck, Amulett und Talisman: Erscheinungsform und Geschichte (Munich, 1966) 192-207. For the mano fica, see S. H. Middleton, Seals, Finger Rings, Engraved Gems and Amulets in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter (Exeter, 1998) nos. 89-90. For the popular late antique votive “hands of Sabazios,” the Phrygian nature god whose cult spread from Thrace, see K. Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1979) no. 163.


Marian Feldman