Wandering Rosettes: Qatna's Key to a Misunderstood Motif

Abstract

A golden inlaid rosette found in the royal tomb of Qatna and dated to the fifteenth to fourteenth century BCE sheds light on the evolution of the Egyptian rosette during the 18th Dynasty and on patterns of artistic exchanges between Near Eastern and Egyptian artists. Since cloisonné technique is uncommon in second millennium BCE pieces of jewelry from Western Asia, the question of the manufacture of the Qatna rosette is reevaluated and a more distant origin proposed on the basis of written documents found in Qatna.