Christie’s is pleased to offer two sales of ancient art to take place on December 9 - Antiquities Including Property from the Collection of Max Palevsky and Ancient Jewelry.  The sales will feature over 300 lots that range from Predynastic Egypt through to the Byzantine period, including a highly important Cycladic marble reclining female figure.  Highlights comprise an exquisite Roman marble torso of an emperor, an Egyptian red granite statue of a queen and an exceptional suite of three Roman gold-mounted sardonyx cameos.

A SELECTION OF HIGHLIGHTS

An Egyptian Red Granite Statue Of Queen
Late Ptolemaic Period, Circa 1ST Century B.C. Estimate: $200,000 - 300,000

An Egyptian red granite statue of a queen possibly depicting Cleopatra VII, striding forward in the traditional Egyptian stance. This queen in its present form may have originally been carved for an earlier queen, likely Karomama, the wife of the Dynasty XXII Pharaoh Osorkon II (924-909 B.C.), the statue was recarved in the Ptolemaic Period with the visage of a different queen, most likely Cleopatra VII. 

A Babylonian Gray Stone Kudurru

Second Dynasty of Isin, Reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, 1126-1105 B.C.

Estimate: $150,000 - 250,000

Leading the Near East selection of works is a Babylonian Gray Stone Kudurru, Second Dynasty of Isin, Reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, 1126-1105 B.C.  A kudurru, or boundary stone, was set up in a temple to record a land grant by the king, which curses any later official who tried to undo the arrangement.  Most date to the end of the Kassite period and continue into the early 1st millennium B.C.

A Mesopotamian Core-Formed Glass Bottle

Circa Mid to Late 15th Century B.C.

Estimate: $150,000 - 250,000

Colored with a vibrant opaque cobalt blue hue, this cylindrical bottle is an exceptional example of an extremely early glass vessel. Like this glass bottle, the first glass vessels ever produced were made in northern Mesopotamia in the late 16th and early 15th centuries B.C. all by the core-form method.  

Auction:  Antiquities including Property from the Collection of Max Palevsky, Dec 9

Ancient Jewelry, Dec 9

Viewing: Christie's Rockefeller Galleries, Dec 4- 9