Roman & Parthian Banded Agate Bead Necklace with Eye Agate Pendant

Near East, Roman and Parthian. A strand of ancient beads whose banded agates flicker between chalk white, smoke gray, and bitter chocolate, each ring of color laid down by the stone itself. Small disc and short barrel forms dominate, drilled through the axis and worn smooth at the perforations from long use, with at least one glass bead and probably several of shell adding softer, more opaque notes among them. At the center hangs a flat pentagonal agate pendant, its concentric bands circling a pale nucleus to form the "eye" motif prized across the Roman and Parthian world as a guard against the evil gaze. The ancient elements have been restrung on a modern cord and fitted with a modern lobster-claw clasp, making the assemblage wearable today. Banded agate, quarried in quantity from the Deccan of India and from sources across the Persian plateau, moved westward along the same routes that carried silk and spice, and by the turn of the era it was among the most widely traded ornamental stones from Mesopotamia to the Rhine. Lapidaries deliberately cut across the stone's natural strata so that the bands would resolve into concentric rings, the closer to a true circle the better: the resulting "eye agate" was understood apotropaically, a manufactured eye set to stare back at a hostile one. Pliny the Elder records the belief that agate quieted thirst, cooled fevers, and turned aside the malice of others, and Parthian and Sasanian burials frequently yield such beads clustered at the throat and wrist, where their protection would do the most good. Item # 204764

Estimate:£300.12

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