Featured Abraxas (?) Gnostic Amulet (?)

This is of a heavy (for its size, which is between a quarter and a .50 piece), dull metal.
It was found decades ago in the drawer of an antique sewing machine, with a bunch of silver Catholic medals. It was blackened, and took ages to clean.

The image is of Abraxas, the rooster headed creature of Gnostic origin, and the lettering on the obverse side is the Greek lettering and ouroboros found on Abraxas amulets.
I cannot find any online exactly like it, only modern reproductions, and one in bronze that was ancient.

The wear is that which occurs over time, the edge wear, typical. The semicircle at one end seems to have been a hole originally with one edge gone; the other two holes were filled with blackened debris when first found.

If anyone is familiar, I'm mostly curious to have it dated. I suspect it is either pewter or lead?

 

Lead seems most probable to me, since it is an impression from both sides of an engraved gem, something like a seal, and you say it is heavy for size.

I don't know how to date it other than to observe that there was a passion for ancient gems in the 18th & 19th centuries. But for all I know it is a 20th century museum souvenir. Interesting that it was with Catholic medals. Someone was covering their bases.

You've been researching, so you'll know all this, but for the rest of the community, Abraxas (or Abrasax, which is used interchangeably & is what is written on this piece) originated in Egypt, picked up some elements from Judaism, continued west to Greece, so of course to the Roman empire. The Greek letters IAW invoke the name of Yahweh. They appear here on the obverse under the figure and on the reverse above the name Abrasax.

The rooster-headed figure itself is seen by scholars as Abraxas as a soldier, with a whip in one hand and a shield in the other. Figures that are bifurcated this way are 'anguiped'; this is Abarasax anguipedes.

The inscription on the back is encircled by an ouroboros, a snake devouring itself, symbol of the continual renewal of the world.

This is the sort of thing that was popular for watch fobs. That could account for at least one of the holes.

 

Thanks for providing better detail than I did.
Hard to see by the photo but the edge and overall wear pattern would take a very long time to happen, so I do think it's quite aged.
The metal is not magnetic, and is soft as metals go; when cleaning it, I accidentally made the roundest hole bigger, trying to dislodge the stuck debris.
I'm fascinated by it, I've never been able to find out much about it.

The sewing machine cabinet was in the basement of my childhood home (I am aged 60) and was from 19th century; I'm certain it isn't a repro. Actual age is anyone's guess, but I thought no harm in seeing if anyone here has a clue.

 

Not a repro of what? It's a repro in the sense that the original was the intaglio that made the impression. So maybe not a repro of another metal piece, but a copy of what was stone in the beginning. Or there may have been an intermediate process of making molds from the 2 sides of an ancient gnostic gem & then striking multiple pieces like yours the way coins are minted.

Sounds even more like lead from your further description. If you inadvertently enlarged the hole while cleaning, I can imagine the edges getting scuffed up pretty easily. We can't see the wear. Does it look like the edges were filed?

 

Many were intaglios but also ancient bronze amulets I have found of same, so I wonder if this is more of the latter category rather than taken from an intaglio. I meant not a modern repro of an ancient piece, one can find those in abundance online.

Yes, soft-ish comparatively and absolutely you make sense thinking that its softer nature lends to faster wear for sure. I was going at it pretty aggressively with a screwdriver (it was so black I couldn't tell what it was at all), like a dummy.
However, the wear seems of the sort that takes ages to happen, hard to put into concrete terms, a coin collector would understand (not that I am that lol) what I mean I think.

Edges have that...gradual smoothing to them, and the central figure and the snake have almost all details smoothed away. The edges don't seem filed, no. The letters in relief round the edges, the wear is apparent.

 

Here's a better close up shot

 

Pretty special piece, whatever the material...Thanks for sharing, an' Welcome here, VOH!

 

Hey, thanks for the welcome!
Yeah it's a fascinating wee thing, I've had it 30+ years and have next to no data on it, despite research. I even took it to a coin shop, no luck there.

 

It was made in a mold, which is essentially an intaglio, the reverse of the final image. But a gem was probably not used directly to make the impression.

Maybe wear came from owner(s) fingering over time.

Suspect the irregular hole that allows it to hang upright is original & the larger, very round hole was made much later, for a purpose I cannot fathom. As you said, the notch at the top edge may originally have been a hole for suspension of the piece. This one has that same notch:

https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/to...d_century_ad_iao_abrasax/1747102/Default.aspx

Maybe the broken edge is due to a suspension loop having broken off?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/395273323568

 

Having looked at the results of a search for 'lead gnostic amulet', I think a numismatist or an antiquarian would find the lack of any corrosion a red flag.

 

The texture of the metal looks more like pewter to me but lead is the only other metal I can think it to maybe be. It feels far heavier than sterling or gold.

I don't think it's Roman era ancient, no. I do think it may be several hundred years old, perhaps.
The blackened state it was in when found was unlike anything I've ever encountered. It was almost an encrustation of a sort, but resistant to removal, very. It looked like a burnt piece of wood, and took so much effort to remove.
Does pewter corrode? I don't know a lot about metals beyond gold and silver.

Yes, I think the semicircle at top was the original hole for suspension, the irregular hole was from disintegration and the perfectly round hole, perhaps purposely bored after the original hole broke?

 

Lead does corrode, as can older pewter that contained lead. (Modern pewter is composed primarily of tin, plus some antimony and copper.)

Depending on conditions, lead can form a patina of lead oxide, which is dark gray and mostly protective (meaning it inhibits further corrosion). Most lead corrosion products are white, (primarily forms of lead carbonate). But exposure to organic acids can produce a corrosion layer that sounds similar to what you say you found on the amulet. Described as "a thick, porous layer of dark grey, powdery corrosion products", such deterioration has been observed on lead artifacts stored in wooden cabinets for a long period of time.

Here are some examples of corroded lead objects, taken from Corrosion degradation of archaeological lead: A review and case study, by A. Towarek et al., National Museum of Warsaw -


https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delive...97029095028072120082105110&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

Corrosion products can often provide information about an object's history, and what environments it has been subjected to.

Recently, a technique has been devised for directly dating lead objects recovered from archeological contexts by measuring the corrosion content -

"Meissner fraction in the superconducting state of lead archaeological artifacts is used to evaluate the mass of the uncorroded metal in the sample. Knowing the total mass of the sample, the mass of all corrosion products is established. It is shown that this mass correlates with the archaeological age of the lead artifacts over a time span of ∼2500 years. Well-dated untreated lead samples from Tel-Dor, the Persian period, Caesarea, the Byzantine and the Crusader periods as well as contemporary data were used to establish the dating correlation. This new chemical dating method is apparently applicable to lead artifacts buried in soils with pH > 6.5. In such soils the corrosion process is very slow and the corrosion products, mainly PbO and PbCO3, accumulate over hundreds of years. The method presented is in principle non-destructive."
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/5/1/399

As for the subject of the amulet, the most informative passage I have found is included an article by Frances and James Schwartz, "ENGRAVED GEMS IN THE COLLECTION OF THE AMERICAN NUMISMATIC SOCIETY: 1. ANCIENT MAGICAL AMULETS", published in Museum Notes (American Numismatic Society), Vol. 24 (1979), pp. 149-197.


https://www.jstor.org/stable/43573582

 

Oh my gosh you are amazing. And as a rare book collector myself, I adore your username.

That second image! That is exactly how it appeared! Black (dark grey), uniformly so, just like that photo.
It took so many sessions to remove it all, and it was so thick, and filled the holes, like I stated above, I was forcing the debris from the holes with a screwdriver point.

So perhaps it is pewter with a lead component? It was indeed stored in a wood cabinet as you mention. I know for certain it was there in the drawer since at least 1933 as that is when the house was bought, and the sewing machine in the basement was there when bought, and had been there no one knows how long, it appeared to be a 19th century model. The house was purchased from the original owners and was built in 1877.

 

With that amount of corrosion, I would think it more likely to be lead rather than pewter. But perhaps a jeweler could provide a test.

I don't know why I didn't stumble on this before, but here is an article that might be worth tracking down. It requires a subscription to access online, but you might be able to find or request the issue from your library -

Roman Lead ‘Iao Abrasax’ Amulets: Magical Pendants, Rings, and Beads, by Gert Boersema. Published in "Koinon", The International Journal of Classical Numismatic Studies, Vol. 5, 2022.

Here is a brief abstract of the contents -

https://archaeopresspublishing.com/ojs/index.php/koinon/article/view/1658

 

"A class of lead objects consisting of magical pendants, rings and beads has not received much attention, even though they are clearly related to the hardstone gems and were likely used as their substitutes." This, yes. If this is indeed lead, which predates pewter (?), that'd help date it.

 

Lead is an elemental metal. Pewter is an alloy that used to contain lead.

The Koinon paper 2manybooks turned up is really exciting, even in abstract. It raises the possibility, maybe even probability, that your amulet is a genuine antiquity.

 

"The sheet is an alloy of 55 percent lead and 45 percent tin, both easily pliable, soft metals. Both metals occur in great abundance in Britain but not in Greece..."

https://greekreporter.com/2023/08/09/greek-roman-era-london-amulet-plague/

This is about an amulet that belonged to a Greek man in London in the second century, but shows they were already blending lead with other metals. I can imagine these leaden Abrasax amulets being popular with Roman soldiers stationed in England.

 

How fascinating. Thanks to the above posts I looked at images of lead amulets and mine looks far less dull and more silvery, more pewter-like in comparison. But the black corrosion fits as I said above.
Since I put up the closer photos, do you guys think the metal looks like lead? Note the texture at the upper R section on the bottom photo.

 

If cleaned as vigorously as you suggest, lead could appear lighter in color, at least for awhile. Under normal circumstances it will form lead oxide on the surface in reaction to air, and the color will become darker.

I think determining the composition would be the next step in figuring out what you have. Are you located in the UK? You might try contacting a University with an archaeology laboratory, where they might have the instruments needed for a non-destructive analysis.

 

Now in USA, but either way I would feel strange bothering someone at uni with this, I'd feel like I were imposing.
Your input has been so grand, much appreciated.