Getty Museum

Engraved Scarab with Isis Flying

Date

500–450 B.C.

Medium

Green jasper

Culture

Phoenician

Department

Jewelry

Institution

Getty Museum

This scarab gem depicts the Egyptian goddess Isis, flying right on four large wings. She is disc-crowned and wears a sheath dress, and holds a lotus flower in each outstretched hand. Carved in the form of a beetle with an intaglio on the flat underside, scarab gems were usually pierced and worn either as a pendant or attached to a metal hoop and worn as a ring, with the beetle side facing out and the intaglio surface resting against the finger. When serving as a seal, the ring was removed, the scarab swiveled, and the intaglio design was pressed into soft clay or wax to identify and secure property. This example may also have functioned as an amulet. According to Egyptian mythology, Isis transformed herself into a bird in order to recover the pieces of her husband, Osiris’s, body after it had been torn apart by his brother, Set; hovering over his reassembled corpse, she then used magic to bring him back to life. As such, the winged Isis was considered a powerful protective symbol, and was depicted frequently on Egyptian amulets and in Egyptian funerary art. The lotus flower was also closely associated with creation and rebirth. Like the Isis iconography, the scarab form originally derived from Egypt, where it had been used for seals and amulets for centuries. However, the use of green jasper as well as the incorporation of Egyptian deities and symbols is typical of Phoenician gem production in the Late Archaic period, and particularly of gems from Punic and Phoenician sites in the western Mediterranean. Images of Isis holding two lotus flowers, often winged but not flying, are also common on Phoenician gems, where her protective symbolism persisted. Greek gem carving, which changed dramatically in form, materials, and technique in the-mid 500s B.C., was influenced by these Phoenician models, which the Greeks probably saw on Cyprus.

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