Engraved Scarab with Youth Leading a Horse (Main View, front oblique)

This gem depicts a nude youth with long, straight hair leading a horse to the right, holding the reins in one hand and a branch in the other. The device type is not unusual on Archaic Greek gems, although no other examples show a youth holding a branch. The style of the gem, with its careful modelling and fine details, is also distinctive and relates it to a series of gems most likely produced in East Greece and referred to as the “Sphinx and Youth Group I.” The youth’s sharply receding forehead and slanting eye are characteristic, as is the treatment of the horse’s legs. The hatched exergue is another shared feature, although this is not exclusive to the group.

Greek gem carving changed dramatically in form, materials, and technique in the-mid 500s B.C. One of these changes was the introduction of the scarab, with its back carved like a beetle and its flat surface an intaglio. They were usually pierced and worn either as a pendant or attached to a metal hoop and worn as a ring, with the beetle side facing out and the intaglio surface resting against the finger. When serving as a seal, the ring was removed, the scarab swiveled, and the intaglio design was pressed into soft clay or wax to identify and secure property.

The scarab form originally derived from Egypt, where it had been used for seals and amulets for centuries. Certain features of Greek scarabs, however, such as the form of the beetle and the hatching around the intaglio motif, show the influence of Phoenician models, which the Greeks probably saw on Cyprus.