Panel with Wheat Sheaves
Not on view
This panel, made from either bone or ivory, is carved in low relief with an almost symmetrical vegetal composition surrounded by a narrow frame. The bifurcated central stalk of this palmate form, long identified as a wheat-sheave, begins just above the center of the panel's lower margin. On either side of the base of the stalk sprouts pairs of leaves, and a dominant pair of fronds sprout directly from the bifurcated central stem and culminate in elongated leaves that extend to the upper corners of the frame. In late antique Egypt and throughout the Mediterranean regions of the late Roman Empire, bone and ivory panels like this decorated domestic furnishings, including couches, tables, and boxes.
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