544. Head Pendant

Condition

Lower part of the face is missing; surface has a layer of weathering in different areas.

Description

Dark blue (appearing black), cylindrical, rod-formed pendant in the shape of a bearded male head. The basic dark purple mass includes the elongated beard as well. The eyes are made of white disks, which are probably ring beads, and smaller disks of dark blue glass render the pupils. The ears are made of small, yellowish ring beads. Lips are rendered with a disk of yellowish glass, pressed in the middle to form the mouth. The nose is made of an applied, triangular, black mass. A white dot is at the middle of the upper forehead. No traces of hair and eyebrows are preserved, and perhaps never existed. Suspension loop partly missing. Remains of dark brown sandy coating adhere to interior of tiny rod hole.

Comments and Comparanda

A group of relatively large glass pendants found throughout the Mediterranean, dated from the sixth to the first centuries BCE, are ascribed to the Punic civilization. There is a wide variety of themes rendered in these pendants, including demon’s heads; African heads; male heads with curly hair, with or without beard, which can be sleek, fluted, curly, or Newgate fringe; female heads with long neck or with twisted hairstyle; and animal heads, as of a ram, hen, cock, monkey, or dog; and various other motifs, including a bell, a wine grape, a phallus. They all have a suspension loop at the top and wide hole at the bottom; they were made around a core on a metal rod and the remains of the scraped-out core are still visible in the walls of the hole. The earliest pendants are the demon’s heads that appear in the second part of the seventh century BCE in the eastern Mediterranean and Carthage. The production of pendants in general seems to go out of fashion in the first century BCE. In general, they are found in Egypt, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Rhodes, the Black Sea coast, Carthage—where a very large number of them were found and it has been proposed that they were produced—Italy, Spain, and the Balearic Islands. They had a clearly apotropaic character, and were probably meant to depict some form of demon or minor divinity (Seefried 1979, pp. 17–26; Seefried 1982).

Male heads present the largest group among Punic head pendants. 2003.206 is a bald variant of a subgroup made of dark (appearing black) glass representing heads of Africans, and in particular to the small group of the ones that do not have a beard (Seefried 1982, pp. 117–118, plate II, type B.I.a), which are dated between 450 and 200 BCE. Other published pendants of this type include one at the British Museum (Tatton-Brown 1981, pp. 148–149, no. 408) and one sold in an auction (Bonhams 2022, p. 130, no. 209).

Provenance

Pierre Mavrogordato, Greek, 1870–1948 (Berlin, Germany); by 1974–1988, Erwin Oppenländer, 1901–1988 (Waiblingen, Germany), by inheritance to his son, Gert Oppenländer, 1988; 1988–2003, Gert Oppenländer (Wailblingen, Germany), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003

Bibliography

von Saldern et al. 1974, p. 82, no. 224; p. 82, plate no. 224.

Seefried 1982, p. 88, no. 9.

Exhibitions

Gläser der Antike: Sammlung Erwin Oppenländer (Hamburg and Cologne, 1974–1975)