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Descriptive Attribute Value(s)
ID 1662
ACCESSION NUMBER 14 1607
FIELD NUMBER 14 3 861
SUBJECT human hand
DESCRIPTION The amulet repesents the hand and the arm up to the height of the wrist. The hand is depicted with the closed fit, the fingers are not showed and the upper profile is flat. The amulet is pierced lengthwise.
CHRONOLOGY Classic Kerma
CHRONOLOGICAL RANGE 1750-1550 BC
MATERIAL faience
MATERIAL (Note) faience
LENGTH (cm) 1.0
WIDTH (cm) 0.3
THICKNESS (cm) 0.2
DIAMETER (cm) 0.0
BIBLIOGRAPHY Reisner 1923: 240-241
REFERENCE Reisner, G.A., 1923, Excavations at Kerma. Harvard African Studies, 5, Cambridge, Mass.
ORNAMENTS_DESCRIPTION This group of beads consists of eight strings of faience beads and amulets, ranging from 51 to 106 cm in length. The longest string has fifty-eight beads and amulets. Types include approximately one hundred ring beads (0.1 cm - 0.4 cm diameter), one ball bead, a number of barrel beads, corss-hatched rectangular beads, plain and fancy cylinder beads, and a wide variety of amulet-beadss. The amulets include: forty-six baboons, three djed pillars, fifty-five elongeted shape with rounded top, thirteen human hands, one hundred and three Taweret, thirteen rectangular decorated plaque with dashed crosses, three rectangular decorated plaques with wavy edges, twenty two rectangular decorated plaque, one rectangular shape with a small protrusion, eighty-four ladders, Also included are approximately two hundred loose complete and fragmentary ring beads and one ivory arrowhead-shaped fragment (1.7 cm x 1.1 cm). The Object Register lists forty-three miscellaneous decorated beads and fragments, twenty-two barrel beads and fragments, twenty cylinder beads and fragments, and a few small ring beads. It is not clear which of these are present here. Also listed in the Object Register but not present here are fourteen ankh amulets, one bone or shell ring, one piece of pottery, and one metal ring.
PRESERVATION STATE Complete
MUSEUM MFA BOSTON
SPECIFIC LOCATION Storerooms
LINK ON-LINE https://collections.mfa.org/objects/365746/beads-and-amulets?ctx=9266a640-8eae-4e3b-8722-2c280ea486af&idx=0
Coordinates N 19°36'43.52" E 30°26'42.23"
SECTOR Eastern cemetery
SPECIFIC CONTEXT K 453-11
ARCHAEOLOGICAL MISSION HARVARD UNIVERSITY- BOSTON MFA EXPEDITION
DIRECTOR OF THE MISSION G. REISNER
YEAR OF EXCAVATION 1914
CREDIT LINE Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Suggested Citation

Elena D’Itria. (2024) "Item 1662 from Africa/Sudan/Kerma". In The Amulets of the Kerma Culture. Elena D’Itria (Ed). Released: In prep. Open Context. <https://opencontext.org/subjects/8732c800-f608-4e3c-8588-a22b00cc542c> ARK (Archive): https://n2t.net/ark:/28722/k26q2dc68

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