Ancient Amulet Depicting a Vulture
Circa 26th Dynasty, Egypt
Lapis Lazuli
664 - 525 B.C.E.

The vulture represented the manifestation of the goddess Nekhbet, patroness of Upper Egypt.

The consort of Amen-Re at Thebes was Mut, a local vulture-form fertility and mother goddess.

Funerary amulets depicting vultures would have an underlying apotropaic function – vultures were very dangerous to any corpse – they undoubtedly became associated with the protective vulture goddesses.

Lapis Lazuli is an opaque, dark blue mineral with gold impurities that was imported almost certainly from Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan. It was the most highly-prized of all the Egyptians’ semi-precious stones, and symbolically it was considered to have the color of the all-embracing night sky. In the Late Period, the principal word for this stone was hsbd (khesbed), a synonym for “joy” and “delight” (Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt, 1994).

1.3 in :: 3.3 cm

InventoryID #13-2679

Not For Sale