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Design Amulet, Pyramidal Back with Horizontal Piercing, Device showing Two Falcons Flanking what is meant to be an Ankh Sign

First Intermediate Period
ca. 2150–2010 B.C.
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 103
Design amulets from the late Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period, also called button seals or figure seals according to their form, were at least in some instances used as seals. They seem overwhelmingly, however, to show devices (base decoration) and combinations of figural backs and base decoration that are clearly amuletic in nature; moreover, at least at Qau, they came mainly from the burials of women and children. Examples are preserved from tombs where they were buried with the dead, sometimes incorporated in strings of beads and amulets.

Doubled falcons in general or the antithetical falcons on either side of the apparent ankh (or protection?) sign seen here are emblems of royal power and royal protective power

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Design Amulet, Pyramidal Back with Horizontal Piercing, Device showing Two Falcons Flanking what is meant to be an Ankh Sign
  • Period: First Intermediate Period
  • Dynasty: 8–11
  • Date: ca. 2150–2010 B.C.
  • Geography: From Egypt
  • Medium: Serpentinite
  • Dimensions: H. 1.3 × W. 1.7 cm (1/2 × 11/16 in.)
  • Credit Line: Gift of Helen Miller Gould, 1910
  • Object Number: 10.130.981
  • Curatorial Department: Egyptian Art

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