Amulet

                                     

                                       

                                     

                                   

                                        Dimensions height 20 cm

                                                          width 23 cm

                                                          depth  3 cm

Lost amulet of Amenhotep III ? :)

"Amenhotep III (Hellenized as Amenophis III; Egyptian Amāna-Ḥātpa; meaning Amun is Satisfied) also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC or June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC^[4] after his father Thutmose IV died. Amenhotep III was the son of Thutmose by a minor wife Mutemwiya.^[5]

His reign was a period of unprecedented prosperity and artistic splendour, when Egypt reached the peak of her artistic and international power. When he died (probably in the 39th year of his reign), his son initially ruled as Amenhotep IV, but later changed his own royal name to Akhenaten."

"His enormous mortuary temple on the west bank of the Nile was, in its day, the largest religious complex inThebes, but unfortunately, the king chose to build it too close to the floodplain and less than two hundred years later, it stood in ruins. Much of the masonry was purloined by Merneptah and later pharaohs for their own construction projects.^[45] The Colossi of Memnon—two massive stone statues, eighteen meters high, of Amenhotep that stood at the gateway of his mortuary temple—are the only elements of the complex that remained standing. Amenhotep III also built the Third Pylon at Karnak and erected 600 statues of the goddess Sekhmet in the Temple of Mut, south of Karnak.^[46] Some of the most magnificent statues of New Kingdom Egypt date to his reign "such as the two outstanding couchant rose granite lions originally set before the temple at Soleb in Nubia" as well as a large series of royal sculptures.^[47] Several beautiful black granite seated statues of Amenhotep wearing the nemes headress have come from excavations behind the Colossi of Memnon as well as from Tanis in the Delta.^[47]

One of the most stunning finds of royal statues dating to his reign was made as recently as 1989 in the courtyard of Amenhotep III's colonnade of the Temple of Luxor where acache of statues was found, including a 6 feet (1.8 m)-high pink quartzite statue of the king wearing the Double Crown found in near-perfect condition.^[47] It was mounted on a sled, and may have been a cult statue.^[47] The only damage it had sustained was that the name of the god Amun had been hacked out wherever it appeared in the pharaoh's cartouche, clearly done as part of the systematic effort to eliminate any mention of this god during the reign of his successor, Akhenaton.^[47]"

                                          

                                            Amenhotep III, Musée du Louvre




                               

                                        Colossal statue of Amenhotep III






                                    

Queen Tiye, whose husband, Amenhotep III, may have been depicted to her right in this broken statue






                                     

Faience decoration with Amenhotep III's prenomen from his Theban palace, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Artillery

                                        Dimensions height 16 cm

                                                          width  37 cm

                                                          depth  3   cm  

GANYMEDES

"In Greek mythology, Ganymede (Greek: Γανυμήδης, Ganymēdēs) is a divine hero whose homeland was Troy. Homer describes Ganymede as the most beautiful of mortals. He was the son of Tros of Dardania, from whose name "Troy" was supposed to derive, and ofCallirrhoe. His brothers were Ilus and Assaracus. In one version of the myth, he is abducted by Zeus, in the form of an eagle, to serve as cup-bearer in Olympus. The myth was a model for the Greek social custom of paiderastía, the socially acceptable erotic relationship between a man and a youth. The Latin form of the name was Catamitus, from which the English word "catamite" derives.^[1]"

"In Olympus, Zeus granted him eternal youth and immortality and the office of cupbearer to the gods, supplanting Hebe. Edmund Veckenstedt associated Ganymede with the genesis of the intoxicating drink mead, which had a traditional origin in Phrygia.^[5] All the gods were filled with joy to see the youth, except for Hera, Zeus's consort, who regarded Ganymede as a rival for her husband's affection. Zeus later put Ganymede in the sky as the constellation Aquarius, which is associated with that of the Eagle (Aquila). A moon of Jupiter, the planet named for Zeus's Roman counterpart, was named Ganymede by modern-era astronomers.

Ganymede was afterwards also regarded as the genius of the fountains of the Nile, the life-giving and fertilizing river. Thus the divinity that distributed drink to the gods in heaven became the genius who presided over the due supply of water on earth."

"Plato accounts for the pederastic aspect of the myth by attributing its origin to Crete, where the social custom of paiderastía was supposed to have originated (see "Cretan pederasty").^[6]He has Socrates deny that Ganymede was the "catamite" of Zeus, and say the god loved him non-sexually for his psychē, "mind" or "soul," giving the etymology of his name as ganu-, "taking pleasure," and mēd-, "mind." Ganymede, he points out, was the only one of Zeus's lovers who was granted immortality.^[7]"

                                         Dimensions height 39 cm

                                                           width 35 cm

                                                           depth 5 cm

"In poetry, Ganymede became a symbol for the beautiful young male who attracted homosexual desire and love. He is not always portrayed as acquiescent: in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, Ganymede is furious at the god Eros for having cheated him at the game of chance played with knucklebones, and Aphrodite scolds her son for "cheating a beginner." The Augustan poet Virgil portrays the abduction with pathos: the boy's aged tutors try in vain to draw him back to earth, and his hounds bay uselessly at the sky.^[8] The loyal hounds left calling after their abducted master is a frequent motif in visual depictions, and is referenced also by Statius:

Here the Phrygian hunter is borne aloft on tawny wings, Gargara’s range sinks downwards as he rises, and Troy grows dim beneath him; sadly stand his comrades; vainly the hounds weary their throats with barking, pursue his shadow or bay at the clouds."^[9] "

                                 

Roman-era relief depicting the eagle, Ganymede wearing his Phrygian cap, and a third figure, possibly his grieving father






 
Ganymede rolling a hoop and bearing aloft a cockerel, a love-gift^[10] from Zeus, who is pictured in pursuit on the obverse of a vase by the Berlin Painter (Attic red-figurekrater, 500–490 BC)







Ganymede (1804) by José Álvarez Cubero

Ganymede Waters Zeus as an Eagleby Bertel Thorvaldsen (Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen).

The Abduction of Ganymede (ca. 1650), by Eustache Le Sueur