sceptre~religious/ritual equipment

Gold sceptre. The sceptre is made of a net casing around a (modern replacement) core. The casing is made up of twelve units of equal size, one slightly longer and one that has been cut down. Each of these units is made up of circles of undulating plain wire, soldered together at the crests and troughs, each junction being hidden by a tiny circle of wire filled with enamel. At the top of each unit is a plain circle of spiral-beaded wire. The enamel fillings are of two colours: one is now white, but was most probably green, and the other is blue. They were so arranged that the colours spiralled down the shaft. The base consists of a gold disc decorated with concentric rings of beaded, plain and rope wires and, in the centre, a rosette with concave petals with spiral-beaded wire borders. At the centre of the rosette -is a large solid gold ball. The capital consists of a sleeve of gold onto which the various ornaments have been attached. The base of the capital consists of rings of plain and beaded wire, a collar of small tongues which were once filled with enamel (now virtually white), and a ring of acanthus leaves of three different heights. The capital itself has double spiral supports reaching up to the abacus at each of the four corners. Each face is decorated with two spirals of plain wire, with a flower at the point where they meet. The petals of these flowers are filled with blue enamel and at the centre is a corkscrew of wire. The top of the plain abacus is lined with a beaded wire. The terminal above consists of a six-lobed fruit of pale green glass set within a nest of carefully veined acanthus leaves. The fruit, perhaps a quince, was cast in one piece, ground to shape and then had a hole drilled vertically through it to take -the end of the central core. The top of the hole was disguised by a small sheet of gold decorated with four ivy-like leaves.