Vatican Museums

The two bracelets, virtually identical, are both made from a rectangular strip with a chain clasp, divided into figured panels and outlined by frames with geometric motifs and bands of lines. The corners of the strip are decorated with human heads. Inside the panels there are three female figures with braided Hathoric hairstyles (typical of the Egyptian goddess Hathor), wearing a long bell-shaped robe. They are depicted hand in hand and holding sceptres crowned with the “paradise flower” and saw palmetto leaves. In the panels at each end, a similar female figure with a sceptre in both hands stands between two front-facing rampant lions, each of which is in turn grasped and pierced by a male figure. There is a clear reference to the theme of the pótnia theron, the lady of the animals, and therefore to life and death. In this case it is associated with the corresponding male version, that of the “lord of the animals” and the “hero” who kills the lion.