Condition
Severely weathered, covered by cream film. Most of it is grainy. The glass is visible only on the breakage at the lower end of the amulet. Parts of the plinth and the feet are missing.
Description
Pendant in the shape of a nude female figure, probably the goddess Ishtar. Relief of a woman standing on a square plinth and holding her breasts. Hair is pulled back from forehead in vertical plaits and falls behind her ears to her neck. A broad necklace of elongated, vertical beads encircles her neck. Belly and hips are accentuated. The forehead, where probably there was a headband, is severely weathered. The back side is flat but uneven. At the level of her breasts a horizontal thread hole was pierced through the bead.
Comments and Comparanda
See Glass from the Ancient World: The Ray Winfield Smith Collection. 1957. Corning, NY: Corning Museum of Glass in the Corning Glass Center., p. 31, no. 25; Barag, Dan. 1970. “Mesopotamian Core-Formed Glass Vessels (1500–500 B.C.).” In Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia, ed. Adolf Leo Oppenheim, Robert Howard Brill, Dan Barag, and Axel von Saldern, 131–200. New York: The Corning Museum of Glass; London; Toronto: Associated University Presses., pp. 188–189, appendix II, figs. 98–99; Grose, David Frederick. 1989. Early Ancient Glass: Core-Formed, Rod-Formed, and Cast Vessels and Objects from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Roman Empire, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 50. New York: Hudson Hills Press., p. 58, nos. 1–3.
Provenance
By 1974–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his son, Gert Oppenländer, 1988; 1988–2003, Gert Oppenländer (Waiblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003
Bibliography
Saldern von, Axel, Birgit Nolte, Peter La Baume, and Thea Elisabeth Haevernick. 1974. Gläser der Antike. Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer. Mainz: von Zabern., p. 91, no. 239; p. 91, plate no. 239.
Wight, Karol. 2011. Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum., pp. 16, 19, fig. 8.
Exhibitions
Aphrodite and the Gods of Love (Malibu, 2012)
Molten Color: Glassmaking in Antiquity (Malibu, 2009–2010)
Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)