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 needing to announce it.
The source: 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 short walls flanking the entrance to the burial chamber, two serpents rear upright, each protecting the tomb.
Art historian Marjorie S. Venit, writing in the American Journal of Archaeology (1997), identifies the left serpent — the one engraved on this pendant — as Isis-Thermouthis. The identification comes from the crown: a sun disc and horns, poorly realised on the faded wall painting, but present. Venit herself notes the ambiguity. What isn't ambiguous is what this serpent is doing there: guarding the threshold between the living world and the dead.
Thermouthis was the Egyptian grain goddess, frequently depicted as a cobra or asp, equated with Isis in Greco-Roman Egypt. Isis-Thermouthis in serpent form was a guardian, placed at doorways, at thresholds, at the boundary between one state and another. The pairing of these two serpents, flanking the burial chamber entrance, was a protection system built in paint two thousand years ago.
What makes this image significant is who claimed her. Cleopatra publicly styled herself as the New Isis, a political and religious identity she built 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 irreducibly 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. Available in sterling silver or gold vermeil. All 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 needing to announce it.
The source: 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 short walls flanking the entrance to the burial chamber, two serpents rear upright, each protecting the tomb.
Art historian Marjorie S. Venit, writing in the American Journal of Archaeology (1997), identifies the left serpent — the one engraved on this pendant — as Isis-Thermouthis. The identification comes from the crown: a sun disc and horns, poorly realised on the faded wall painting, but present. Venit herself notes the ambiguity. What isn't ambiguous is what this serpent is doing there: guarding the threshold between the living world and the dead.
Thermouthis was the Egyptian grain goddess, frequently depicted as a cobra or asp, equated with Isis in Greco-Roman Egypt. Isis-Thermouthis in serpent form was a guardian, placed at doorways, at thresholds, at the boundary between one state and another. The pairing of these two serpents, flanking the burial chamber entrance, was a protection system built in paint two thousand years ago.
What makes this image significant is who claimed her. Cleopatra publicly styled herself as the New Isis, a political and religious identity she built 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 irreducibly 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. Available in sterling silver or gold vermeil. All pieces are handmade in London to order. Current lead time is two weeks.
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