Ancient Egyptian Wood Solid God Osiris. 26th Dynasty, 664 – 525 BC. 29,5 cm H. Very big and fine quality

God Osiris - Very big and fine quality - CULTURE: Ancient Egypt PERIOD: 26th Dynasty, 664 – 525 BC MATERIAL: Solid Bronze DIMENSIONS: Height 21. 4 cm (23. 5 with tag) , 29,5 cm H with stand. PROVENANCE: From a private collection, Holland. Acquired in the 1970s. CONDITION: Good state of preservation, only the figure has lost part of the feathers of the crown. Without restorations. DESCRIPTION: A solid bronze statue of one of the principal deities of the Egyptian pantheon, the god Osiris. The figure is upright in a rigid position. He is standing on a square base which has a pin in the lower surface so that the statue can be attached to a larger base below of wood or bronze. Osiris is wrapped in a shroud which clings closely to the contours of his slender body. Only his hands, crossed over his chest, protrude from this shroud. He is holding the flail, the nekhekh sceptre, in his left hand and the heka sceptre in the form of a crook, in the right hand. He wears the most representative headdress, the atef crown, topped by a solar disk, on his head. This is made up of the White Crown of Upper Egypt with the addition on each side of a curling ostrich feather. A serpent snakes down the front of the crown with its head erect just above the god’s forehead. His chin is adorned with a long plaited false beard which ends in an outward curl. This false beard is the sign that this is a posthumous representation of the god. Finally, we see that he is wearing the wide collar, the usekh collar, over his chest and around his neck. Originally, the figure of Osiris was linked to the fecundity of the Egyptian soil, the renewal of vegetation and the world of shepherds, as evidenced by the hekat scepter (which reproduces the shepherds’ crook) . He embodied the fertile land and the arable fields, and became therefore the guardian of the order of the universe and the cycles of nature. But the most famous myth concerning him is the one in connection with his death, known through many versions: the son of Geb (the earth) and Nut (the sky) and the husband of Isis, the god primarily was a pharaoh. With Isis, they were a pair of royal benefactors who taught mankind farming and fishing (Osiris) , weaving and medicine (Isis) . Jealous of the sovereign, his brother Seth assassinated him, cut up his body and disposed of the pieces in the Nile. However, Isis, his wife and faithful widow, found and reassembled the body of her husband and, with the help of her sister, Nephtys, and of Anubis, she embalmed the corpse. After breathing life into him for a short instant, Isis was impregnated by Osiris: this union resulted in the birth of Horus, who, following in the footsteps of his father, became Pharaoh. And so, after having survived the ordeal of death, Osiris triumphed thanks to the magic of his wife and became the ruler of the underworld, which contained the seeds of life and, at the same time, was the protector of the deceased, to whom he would promise life after death. \t These two closely related characteristics linking the god of fecundity and the funerary divinity were certainly the basis for the success Osiris enjoyed in the Egyptian world: from the New Kingdom on, and especially during the entire 1st millennium B. C. , statuettes of Osiris were among the most important funerary offerings. \t The technique of lost wax casting is a sculptural procedure using a mould made from a prototype of the piece to be worked, and this prototype is usually made from beeswax. This is covered with a thick layer of soft material, usually clay, which then solidifies. Once this has hardened it is put in a kiln where the wax inside melts and leaks out through expressly made holes in the clay. In its place molten metal is injected and this takes on the exact form of the mould. To release the final piece the mould must be removed. \t BIBLIOGRAPHY: - AA. VV. Fastueuse Égypte. Musée Calvet, Avignon (25/06/2011 au 14/11/2011) , ouvrage publié sous la direction d’Odile Cavalier. AVIGNON. 2011. - AA. VV. Momias egipcias. El secreto de la vida eterna. Fundació La Caixa. 2013. - BIANCHI R. S. , ZIEGLER Ch. Les Bronzes égyptiens - Fondation Gandur pour l’Art. Till Schaap Editions. Berne. 2014. p. 96 fig 21. - GODDIO, F. Osiris : Mystères engloutis d'Egypte. Coédition Flammarion. 2015. - PAGE-GASSER M. - WIESE A. B. Egypte, Moments d’éternité. Genève, 1997. pp. 260-261, n. 172. - SCHOSKE S. - WILDUNG D. Gott und Götter um alten Ägypten. Mayence/Rhin. 1992. pp. 123-124, n. 83. - WILKINSON H. R. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London. 2003. Notes: - The piece includes authenticity certificate. - The piece includes Spanish Export License (Passport for European Union) . - According to Spanish legislation, items sent outside the European Union are subject to export taxes and will be added to the invoice, at the buyer's expense. These export fees are fixed on the final auction price and the tax rate is not applied directly on the total value of the item to be exported, but rather the different percentages by sections are applied to it: - Up to 6,000 euros: 5%. - From 6. 001 to 60. 000 euros: 10%. This export permit application process can take between 1-2 months maximum. - The seller guarantees that he acquired this piece according to all national and international laws related to the ownership of cultural property. Provenance statement seen by Catawiki.