Featured What Is This Scene?

@Bronwen suggested I post this scene on a cameo I recently purchased to garner a broader range of input about the imagery than it got on her Cameo: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer Thread https://www.antiquers.com/threads/cameos-show-tell-or-ask-answer.23493/page-206#post-3044624.
Bronwen provided a great deal of information including: "Very nicely done in helmet shell." . . . "It dates to what I am starting to think of as the Italian Cameo Revival. During the Victorian era demand for cameos became so great that anyone & everyone was making shell cameos & quality fell off. And then there was a short period, seems to have started in the 1920s & lasted...? when cameos with a modern sensibility flourished. Giovanni Noto is one name we have from that period. This is in a similar style. Noto signed his work, but this cutter was probably in his orbit."

Bronwen also commented that the scene is reminiscent of those portraying an Egyptian Pharaoh being entertained by a dancing girl with males playing guitars, lyres and harps. The question arises who is the armed man with the stick observing the bare breasted dancer while the pharaoh sits idly in the background being fanned. Bronwen suggested "Either there is a painting out there that looks like this or there is a lot of artistic license at work. There are so many literary & historical sources of imagery that I do not know. Maybe we should put the cameo in a separate thread with the title 'What is this scene?' & submit it for the collective Antiquers brain to work on." So please look and tell us what you think.

 

Let's throw this in for support:



The musicians on your cameo & in this illustration appear to be female.

Salome & Herod and Anthony & Cleopatra have been ruled out.

 

it's a party with egyptian dancers..and fierce critters....

 

The guy on the right looks more like a Roman, but is he wearing an Egyptian style headdress?

 

what about the head gear on these two soldiers at the rear....Egyptian too ??

 

The harps with the head at the base are the same..........

 

You're a big help.

 

I see the pointy bit in the front, but could that be a crown?

 

Those look Egyptian to me too, and they also have big sticks

 

I don't know what the cutter had in mind, but they vaguely remind me of Zeus-Serapis:



a conflation of Zeus with the Egyptian god Serapis. The thing on his head is said to be a modeus, a corn measure.

 

They look like guards to me.

 

That's very strange. So that's why he's allowed to hang around because he represents this Zeus-Serapis?

 

Yes, but it looks like he is also wearing some kind of head covering? Maybe some princeling looking to acquire his first harem girl?

 

While his proud father looks on - and then he can go back out and measure corn?

 

He turns up regularly on cameos.

 

There you have it.

 

Really. I never knew this. I associate Egypt with Rome, but I'm sure a seafaring folk, the Greeks must have wandered into Egypt pretty early.

 

The Ptolemies were Greek, a line descended from a general Alexander the Great left behind to govern the region. Alexandria is named for A the G. Cleopatra, all of them, were Ptolemies. Think the Cleopatra was Cleopatra VII. The royal women all seemed to have been named Cleopatra, Berenike, or Arsinoe.

 

Just now appreciating what a good job the cutter did with conveying the depth of the room. A better sense of perspective than is commonly seen.

 

I see that too now. Not that I have any knowledge of how cameos are cut, but I see that in paintings a lot, where perspective is lacking (not deliberately.)