Scarab

Red carnelian scarab with tall body, plain but accurate winglets, single border, hatched. Chipped in upper right corner of engraved face. Engraved scene (within hatched/rope-pattern border) of nude youth on a grassy ground-line approaching what appears to be a bearded head emerging from a pile of rocks or a short, spirally grooved columnar stone base. The head has odd, vertically hatched hair, so faintly engraved that it does not appear in impressions, but is evident in the stone. The youth bends toward the head in a sort of conversation pose, apparently touching it with his left (back) hand, his right arm curving behind his back to support a long, thin spear or staff. His torso and face are carefully modeled; the head seems to gaze back into his eyes. Chipped on one end, behind the youth’s head. Described in the Hertz Catalogue as “Nekyomant, with a lance in his hand, touching a human head which is issuing from a rock.”