Getty Museum

Snake Bracelet

Date

1st century A.D.

Medium

Gold

Culture

Romano-Egyptian

Department

Jewelry

Institution

Getty Museum

Spiral bracelets in the form of snakes were very popular in antiquity. This type of bracelet was worn coiled around the wearer's arm, the continuation of a fashion known earlier in the Greek world in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Such slip-on bracelets were always worn in pairs on the wrists or the upper arms. On this single spiral example, the goldsmith carefully recreated the sinuous motion of the curves of a snake's tail. Incised crosshatching on the snake's head and tail represents the texture of scales. A second smaller head emerges from the tail, creating an abbreviated version of the more elaborate double-snake bracelets popular in the earlier Ptolemaic period.

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