An Egyptian Diorite Heart Amulet, Late Period, ca. 664 - 332 BCE Architectural and from off your gods

and from off your gods

Such relief sculpture is unusual for Central Asia: the only other published examples are a fragment of a steatite plaque from Margiana with a low-relief image of a recumbent bull and a few small fragments of floral and figural decoration for a "mosaic" found at Dashli Tepe

Its use in sacred contexts reflects the Egyptians' reverence for purity and permanence in their religious artifacts

assembled in the 1950s

called a lotus by the Greeks and Romans

An Egyptian Diorite Heart Amulet, Late Period, ca. 664 - 332 BCE Architectural and from off your godsTo the Egyptians the heart was the most essential of organs, not because it pumped blood around the body it is unclear that they understood this function but because they believed it was the seat of intelligence, the originator of all feelings and actions, and the storehouse of memory. From the New Kingdom, the heart became one of the most important of all amulets and was set on every mummy until the end of the Pharaonic period, often in numbers and