Artefacts in focus #1: an ornate amulet of Thoth

I have truly loved doing artefact photography over the last few years, and there are many objects I’ve photographed that have been such fun to work with. Sometimes, however, I get to photograph an artefact that has something a bit extra special about it and what comes out from my camera is just … well … *chef’s kiss*. This is what happened when I photographed a faience amulet of Thoth for the Garstang Museum of Archaeology’s Creatures of the Nile exhibition.

It’s a beautiful object – a little unusual in its form, and superbly crafted with lots of fine detail – and one of my photos became the featured image for the exhibition:

The amulet

Thoth was a multi-faceted, ancient deity. He was associated with the moon, with the recording of time and kings’ reigns, with the creation of written language, and was the patron deity of scribes.

This amulet of the god was discovered in the ancient city of Memphis, and because of his beautifully ornate construction, probably dates to the Saite period. Only the top half remains, coming in at a mere 5.9 cm tall, but his bottom half would likely have been the typical kilted legs in a striding pose, similar to this example:

He’s in his form as an ibis-headed man, wearing an ornate atef-crown and he’s holding a wadjet-eye (aka the Eye of Horus) in front of his chest.

Considering the quality of the amulet, the hands are surprisingly lacking in detail; they look like mittens, with almost no detail in the fingers. The positioning of his hands is unusual as well; although there’s always a chance there’s symbolism attached, it may well have simply been for structural/practical reasons. Afterall, the positioning of the wadjet-eye itself is likely a way to support Thoth’s slender neck and beak.

There’s lots of symbolism here. The ibis-headed Thoth was associated with funerary practices. Ancient Egyptians used the lunar cycle and movement of stars to mark the passing of time for ritual and calendrical purposes. Thoth’s beak was shaped like the crescent of the new moon, thus associating him with record-keeping for ritual purposes, earning him the place as the deity who oversaw and recorded the famous weighing of the heart in the Hall of Judgment. Amulets in this form were placed on the chests of deceased Egyptians to help them receive a positive judgement and a place in the afterlife.

The wadjet-eye, associated with rebirth, is a less common addition, and was included to help revive the deceased person into the afterlife. According to Carol Andrews:

Amulets of Thoth as a walking ibis-headed man carrying the wedjat-eye before him relate directly to the power of the eye of Horus to revive the dead Osiris and thus any of the dead, and to provide food offerings in the Other World.

The atef-crown, more usually worn by Osiris, was a composite headdress, comprising:

• the white crown of Upper (southern) Egypt, symbolising kingship and power
• ostrich feathers, symbolising the goddess Ma’at for truth and justice
• a pair of rams’ horns, associated with the creator god Amun-Ra

The crown would sometimes feature rearing cobras either side of the feathers as protectors; in this case, however, it has a cobra on one side and a standing figure – possibly an ape of some kind – on the other.

If you want to see the piece in 3D, it’s on the Garstang’s Sketchfab page. If you scroll around to the back of the piece, you can see the loop and hole at the back of his neck so it could be strung and worn.

Object fact file

• Material: blue faience
• Location discovered: ancient Memphis (near Mit Rahina)
• Date: probably Saite period (26th Dynasty), c.672–525 BCE
• Current location: the Garstang Museum of Archaeology, Liverpool (Accession Number E.9003)
• Size: 5.9 × 2.7 × 2.8 cm

The photography

Photographing this piece was an absolute joy. He’s just beautiful and interesting, and the craftsmanship and detail is amazing.

I photographed him from two angles: a quarter-profile of the whole amulet, and from the side, focussing in closer on his face and the wadjet-eye.

The only real issue I came across was that where his lower half has broken off is uneven, so I couldn’t really stand him upright. I did have a solution though.

Many years ago – probably the best part of a century ago now – someone working with the collection decided it would be a good idea to glue lots of the amulets to small wooden plinths, probably for display purposes. The museum has since removed some of the objects from their plinths, including this one, but the plinths remain in the storage boxes with them. Fortunately, where the amulet was attached to the plinth, an exact mirror image of the base of the amulet remains in the hardened glue, so it’s easy to just balance the amulet back on top for photography. It does mean that part of the plinth is visible in the photos, but I just took it out again during editing.

The glue in this case seems to have been applied somewhat liberally, and has left a large, hard glob. But thankfully it doesn’t get in the way of the amulet itself, and it was easy enough to paint back out again during editing.

As is always the case with objects this size, I had to photograph him using focus stacking – there’s no way I’d get the whole object in focus in a single photograph – as well as exposure bracketing (taking the same photo at two or more exposures) to get the exposure just how I want across the whole image.

In total, the first image is made from 90 individual photos: 30 in each stack, with three exposures (the main exposure, plus one lighter and one darker). The second image is made from even more: 60 photos in the stack, across three exposures, so 180 in total. I needed more photos in the stack for the second image because I was closer to the amulet, so my depth-of-field was much shallower.

I used Affinity Photo to create a TIFF file of each stack (it takes the sharpest part of each photo to create a composite), and then layer up the three TIFFs of each exposure in Affinity Photo and ‘paint’ through what I need from the darker and lighter exposures.

Add in the background removal, a little sharpening and some micro-contrast adjustments to specific parts of the image, and what comes out is this high-impact, exhibition-worthy image:

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Julia

Unless otherwise credited, all photos in this post are © Julia Thorne. If you’d like to use any of my photos in a lecture, presentation or blog post, please don’t just take them; drop me an email via my contact page. If you share them on social media, please link back to this site or to one of my social media accounts. Thanks!