A fine bit of photographical trickery perhaps (what is amber without some illumination?), but I find this pendant absolutely bewitching. It is Etruscan, large of kind (7 cm long), and quite early (mid 6th century B.C.) with the boar’s musculature lightly incised, with a curlicue forming his unlikely shoulder and bicep and the porcine hoof snugged up beneath his snout.
Amber was prized in Antiquity precisely because it seemed lit from within, its peculiar glow so distinct from the flinty surfaces of polished hard stones or precious metals. The material’s mythological origins are diverse and creative, but the one I find particularly appropriate here holds that amber was the solidified tears of Meleager’s sisters upon his untimely death.
Vanquishing the dread Calydonian boar was the comely young hero’s most famous exploit. This fearsome boar in miniature probably does not refer specifically to the myth of Meleager, but it’s a fun idea to contemplate as boar protomes do seem to have been popular in amber. But what brave hunter with heroic aspirations and a penchant for grandiosity wouldn’t want to wear this luminous hunk upon his chest?
