Small fish in gold

Find the necklace with the little fish. Before you read its label, trace the pendant with your eyes. Two fish sit beside a lotus flower. The whole arrangement is small enough to wear, yet it gives you several shapes to discover. This is gold jewellery from the New Kingdom, probably made in the fifteenth century BCE. That places it more than three thousand years away from us. Stay with the workmanship for a moment. Notice how the maker turned familiar living forms into a balanced ornament. Some of the inlay has disappeared, so the spaces you see today once belonged to a more complete surface. Try to distinguish what survives from what is missing. We do not know enough to say who wore this necklace or what every detail meant to that person. Look at the fish and the lotus once more. The maker used shapes from the natural world in an object worn close to the body. You can recognise those shapes and the work of the gold without having to give the wearer an invented story.