gems, glyptic, engraved gems, agate, cameo, intaglio, garnet, Egypt, Greek, Greece, Indian lapidary

During the Hellenistic period the medium of gem cutting underwent substantial changes from the traditions established in Greece during Archaic and Classical times.¹ Especially notable are the use of new shapes and materials. The changing fashions favored exotic gemstones, often large and convex in shape and set in large gold rings, rather than the scarabs and scaraboids of cornelian and agate which had been standard throughout Greece and Italy since the sixth century B.C. A variety of new stones, including beryl, peridot (olivine), tourmaline, opal, and garnet, made an appearance for the first time after Alexander’s conquests, acquired in India and other eastern lands previously less accessible. The Ptolemaic kingdom produced the finest engraved gemstones of the Hellenistic age, and these were usually of the more precious materials, with garnet being the preferred stone. Busts of the king or queen, or busts of deities associated with royal cults, were the favorite devices. Several are in The Walters Art Gallery, including a famous, large, but fragmentary, garnet with the portrait of Berenike II, which preserves the signature of the gem cutter Nikandros (fig. I); a peridot bearing the head of a Ptolemaic queen as Isis (fig. 2); another fine garnet with the head of Isis (fig. 3); and a large garnet in a gold ring depicting Dionysos, perhaps intended to represent Ptolemy IV, who took the epithet Neos Dionysos (fig. 4). Outstanding Ptolemaic stones in other collections include the chalcedony in Boston engraved with a bust of a queen (Kleopatra II?) as Isis signed by the artist Lykomedes;⁸ a large cornelian with the laureate head of Berenike II in Leningrad; two amethysts depicting Ptolemy II or III in Oxford and Berlin; a garnet in Florence probably depicting Kleopatra I; a large garnet engraved with the head of a Ptolemaic queen in Vienna; and a rare example in Geneva of an opal engraved with the three-quarter facing head of Ptolemy II or III as Apollo. Other examples could be cited.