Bracelets with a basket flanked by snakes

These elaborate bracelets were worn on separate wrists as a matched pair. They illustrate the shift from the highly decorative gold surfaces characteristic of Hellenistic jewelry to the gem-set ornaments with unadorned, polished metal surfaces popular in the Roman period. During this transition, the approach toward color also changed. Whereas the Greeks used opaque enamels and occasional gem highlights to add color to ornaments, Roman jewelers often created ornaments as a vehicle to display gemstones, which were typically cabochons set in gold-backed bezels. Fashionable gems included garnet, amethyst, blue sapphire, emerald, and pearl. Each of these bracelets consists of a pearl-studded gold band with a central urn-shaped element (kalathos) made of cast gold, flanked by two heavy gold wires that terminate in a snake's head crowned with a pearl. Snakes had many associations in the Classical world, including with the healing cult of Asklepios and with Dionysos, god of wine. In Egypt the snake was associated with the goddess Isis as a symbol of fertility and of the afterlife. Emeralds, the gemstones used to decorate these two bracelets, came from Egypt and were often incorporated into adornments made by Egyptian artisans; similar bracelets are known from jeweled representations on Egyptian mummy shrouds of the early Roman period.