04/04/2024
Nile Catfish Pendant
This fish pendant represents a Synodontis Batensoda, more commonly known as the Nile catfish, a species of fish named for its black belly. Often worn at the end of a plait of hair, amulets like this one were used by children and young women to protect against drowning.
This fine amulet is made of gold with stone inlays, including a red stone for the right eye and a green stone for the left. Amulets in the form of the Synodontis Batensoda were particularly popular during the Middle Kingdom, when the fish might have been identified with an astronomical constellation.
A fish pendant features famously in an ancient Egyptian tale that is part of what we now call the Westcar Papyrus. The story describes how young, beautiful women from the royal palace, wearing only βnets,β were rowing a king across a lake when one womanβs turquoise fish pendant fell from her braid into the water. She stops rowing, thus disrupting the boat party.
Though the king offers her a replacement, the woman refuses; she wants her own pendant returned. The story ends happily when a magician recovers the lost pendant by moving half of the water in the lake onto the other half!
Middle Kingdom, 12th dynasty, ca. 1985-1773 BC. Gold with Egyptian green glazed faience, chalcedony, turquoise, carnelian, lapis lazuli and black stone inlay. Now in the Walters Art Museum. 57.1072
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