Crowned snake pendant, set with a 2mm faceted emerald
12.5mm × 19mm oval pendant in sterling silver or gold vermeil
For those who carry authority without the need to announce it.
The image on this pendant is taken from a painted serpent in the Tigran Tomb, Alexandria, Egypt — a tomb Lucinda visited in person. The Tigran Tomb sits above ground, directly over the famous catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, and dates to roughly the second century CE. It was found submerged and excavated in 1952. Inside, painted on the wall guarding the doorway to the burial chamber, a serpent rears upright, crowned with a sun-disc and horns.
Art historian Marjorie S. Venit, writing in the American Journal of Archaeology, identifies this serpent as Isis-Thermouthis — Isis in her serpent form, a recognised manifestation of the goddess in Greco-Roman Egypt. Venit herself notes the crown is faintly and ambiguously rendered on the original wall painting; even scholars are reading a faded image.
What makes this image significant is who claimed her. Cleopatra publicly styled herself as the New Isis — a political and religious identity she built her entire authority on. This is not a generic protective serpent. It is, very plausibly, the specific goddess Cleopatra claimed to be, painted on a tomb wall in her own city.
The stone: Egypt's emerald mines — among the oldest in the world, worked since at least 330 BC — were a significant source of the stone throughout antiquity. Cleopatra was documented to have a particular association with emeralds; she is recorded to have gifted them bearing her own portrait. The emerald is among the most materially complex of gemstones: a variety of beryl coloured vivid green by chromium and vanadium, with characteristic inclusions — jardin, the French term for garden — that make each stone deeply individual.
A 2mm faceted emerald: small, precise, and exactly right for a stone whose meaning is in its nature rather than its size.
The talisman: Wear this as a reminder that authority is not performance. A goddess painted in faded colour on a tomb wall, claimed by the most powerful woman of her age — sovereignty that doesn't need to announce itself to be real.
Materials:
Engraved pendant, 2mm faceted emerald
12.5mm x 19mm oval pendant available in sterling silver or gold vermeil
All of our pieces are handmade in London to order. Current lead time is two weeks.
Crowned snake pendant, set with a 2mm faceted emerald
12.5mm × 19mm oval pendant in sterling silver or gold vermeil
For those who carry authority without the need to announce it.
The image on this pendant is taken from a painted serpent in the Tigran Tomb, Alexandria, Egypt — a tomb Lucinda visited in person. The Tigran Tomb sits above ground, directly over the famous catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, and dates to roughly the second century CE. It was found submerged and excavated in 1952. Inside, painted on the wall guarding the doorway to the burial chamber, a serpent rears upright, crowned with a sun-disc and horns.
Art historian Marjorie S. Venit, writing in the American Journal of Archaeology, identifies this serpent as Isis-Thermouthis — Isis in her serpent form, a recognised manifestation of the goddess in Greco-Roman Egypt. Venit herself notes the crown is faintly and ambiguously rendered on the original wall painting; even scholars are reading a faded image.
What makes this image significant is who claimed her. Cleopatra publicly styled herself as the New Isis — a political and religious identity she built her entire authority on. This is not a generic protective serpent. It is, very plausibly, the specific goddess Cleopatra claimed to be, painted on a tomb wall in her own city.
The stone: Egypt's emerald mines — among the oldest in the world, worked since at least 330 BC — were a significant source of the stone throughout antiquity. Cleopatra was documented to have a particular association with emeralds; she is recorded to have gifted them bearing her own portrait. The emerald is among the most materially complex of gemstones: a variety of beryl coloured vivid green by chromium and vanadium, with characteristic inclusions — jardin, the French term for garden — that make each stone deeply individual.
A 2mm faceted emerald: small, precise, and exactly right for a stone whose meaning is in its nature rather than its size.
The talisman: Wear this as a reminder that authority is not performance. A goddess painted in faded colour on a tomb wall, claimed by the most powerful woman of her age — sovereignty that doesn't need to announce itself to be real.
Materials:
Engraved pendant, 2mm faceted emerald
12.5mm x 19mm oval pendant available in sterling silver or gold vermeil
All of our pieces are handmade in London to order. Current lead time is two weeks.
