COPTE, Egypt, Early Christian Church, 4th-6th century A.D. - Lot 1

COPTE, Egypt, Early Christian Church, 4th-6th century A.D. Comb with rows of teeth of different sizes at each end for detangling and styling. The central part is perforated with a figurative decoration in two registers: in the lower part, a wolf sitting on its hindquarters, head turned backwards, ears erect; in the upper part, a deer represented in profile, also with its head turned backwards. The whole is framed by incised linear motifs and punctuated by concentric circles engraved in dotted lines. Wood, age marks, broken and glued in the center. Provenance: collection of a former Parisian expert, built up between 1970 and 1980. This comb is part of the production of highly symbolic everyday objects in Coptic Egypt. The wolf, a recurring figure in early Christian iconography, embodies both vigilance and moral ambivalence, while the deer refers to the soul in search of salvation and resurrection. The deliberately spare composition is in keeping with the sober, meaningful aesthetic of early Egyptian Christian objects, comparable examples of which are in the collections of the Musée du Louvre.