Pendant

This female head is made of glass in different shades. The face is of yellow paste, while the eyes, the ears and the hairstyle have been modelled separately and stuck to it at a temperature of 800 degrees of the Celsius grade. The colours were achieved by using various oxides and metals. This object is formed by the technique of drawing glass on a metal rod. Similar objects are frequent finds in graves. The suspension loop on the top of the head attests to their use as pendants or as central ornaments of a necklace, possibly apotropaic in character. It has been suggested that these female heads, which are commoner in the Near East, render the goddess Astarte. The earliest pendants in the shape of a human head were fashioned in Egypt between the 8th and the 6th c. BC, and reached Carthage and other Phoenician colonies in the Western Mediterranean through Phoenician trading activity. Subsequently they began to be made in other regions too. The illustrated pendant is of a type produced in Cyprus, Rhodes and Alexandria between 300 and 150 BC. It may well be a creation of a local Cypriot workshop in which Phoenician glassmakers were employed, as it is well known that there was a pronounced Phoenician presence on the island from as early as the 9th c. BC.