Pendant set with a cameo depicting Hermaphroditus (ca 100 BCE)
Gold, jasper cameo and garnets in the frame, 6.5 x 5.7 cm. Private Collection.
“An oval gold pendant is set with a fine pale banded jasper cameo surrounded by cabochon garnets. The cameo depicts the naked Hermaphroditos […] seated three-quarters to the left on a mound of rocks […]
The gold surround for the cameo has fourteen irregular cabochon garnets in bezel settings (the fifteenth one is broken and missing) while the cameo itself is held in a saw-tooth bezel setting. The two oval borders running around the garnets are made of irregular grains. In the field delineated by these two grain borders, and surrounding the bezel settings of garnets, irregular designs composed of four to twelve grains set around a central grain in the form of rosettes are dispersed asymmetrically. The crushed back of the pendant, with an ancient welding and the two hooks welded to the top and below, is a sign of local craftsmanship. The rosette patterns on this pendant are quite similar in style and technique to the ones on the medallion with a gold coin of Kanishka I set in centre which was certainly locally made. The treatment of the grained borders reminds us of the round bracteates from the Tepe (see Afghanistan, no. 90). The central cameo surrounded by two parallel borders is quite similar to the pendant set with a bust of helmeted Greco-Bactrian type from the same treasure.”
- Convergence of Hellenism & Buddhism: Gandharan Art Revisited Osmund Bopearachchi (Part 2 of 2)
- Osmund Bopearachchi; When West Met East Gandhāran. Art Revisited. vol.II, p.236
https://www.academia.edu/104677334/When_West_Met_East_Gandh%C4%81ran_Art_Revisited_vol_II