1976.15

Roman Bone Carving

Purchased. Ht 12.2cm; max. width 5.2cm.

Intact but for a fragment at the upper left which has been broken off and re-joined; otherwise in good condition with a well-polished surface. The carving is on a section of animal bone (rather than ivory) and shows the figure of Fortuna standing three-quarter right and looking back left. She carries a wreath in her lowered right hand and a cornucopia to her left shoulder.

The design is complete in itself and the edges are smoothly finished. The piece is therefore not a fragment of a vessel but an ornament or fitting to a larger object, perhaps a piece of furniture.

For the figure-type, compare L. Marangou, Bone Carvings from Egypt, I. Graeco-Roman Period (Tübingen 1976) 56 f., pll. 56-58. See too the pyxis from Cyprus with the relief of Harpokrates, T. Spiteris, Art of Cyprus (London 1970) 201, which is of similar style but less finely carved. It has been dated to the first century; nevertheless, on general grounds the second century may be preferable for our piece.

There is a useful discussion of ivory-carving by Albizzati and Beccherucci in Enciclopedia  dell’Arte Antica. Classica e Orientale i, 937-945, s.v. Avorio, with bibliography. For material from the Palatine in Rome, see now A. St Clair, Carving as Craft. Palatine East and the Greco-Roman Bone and Ivory Carving Tradition (Baltimore 2003) and, more broadly, J. De Grossi Mazzorin and C. Minniti, “La lavorazione dell’osso e dell’avorio nella Roma antica”, in J. De Grossi Mazzorin, D. Saccà and C. Tozzi (eds), Atti del 6° Convegno Nazionale di Archeozoologia, Parco dell’Orecchiella, San Romano in Garfagnana – Lucca,  21-24 maggio 2009 (Lucca 2012) 413-417. For a good collection and discussion of somewhat later ivories, see W.F. Volbach, Elfenbeinarbeiten der Spätantike und des frühes Mittelalters (Mainz 1976) as well as the attractive general studies by H.-W. Hegemann, Das Elfenbein in Kunst und Kultur Europas (Mainz 1988) and A. Cutler, Late Antique and Byzantine Ivory Carving (Aldershot 1998). There are also good and interesting discussions of questions of methodology raised in A. Cutler, “Five Lessons in Late Roman Ivory”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 6, 1993, 167-192.

It is likely that our piece is of Alexandrian manufacture. Compare in addition to the studies just mentioned, E. Rodziewicz, Bone and Ivory Carvings from Alexandria. French Excavations 1992-2004 (Etudes alexandrines, 12, Cairo 2007) and the same author’s introductory overview, “Archaeological Evidence of Bone and Ivory Carvings in Alexandria”, in: J.-Y. Empereur (ed.), Commerce et artisanat dans l’Alexandrie hellénistique et romaine. Actes du colloque d'Athènes, organisé par le CNRS, le Laboratoire de céramologie de Lyon et l'Ecole française d'Athènes (BCH Suppl. 33, Paris 1998) 135-158. See too the valuable article by R.M. Bonacasa Carra, “Ancora sul problema degli ossi scolpiti del Museo di Alessandria”, Études et Travaux 25, 2012, 35-50, and note her fig. 22 (inv. 18600). Again there is a useful article By N. Eschbach on a group of bone reliefs from Perge in Asia Minor but doubtless Alexandrian in origin: “Spätantike Knochenreliefs aus Perge”, Archäologischer Anzeiger 2014:2, 75-82.

Charles Ede Ltd (London), Catalogue 105 (November 1976) no. 36 (ill.); J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 101.