Egyptian Bangle Bracelet

BG, who is a famous historian in Santa Barbara, sends me this bracelet, passed down from a friend of her grandmother’s whose husband served in Panzer Army Africa North Africa during WWII. This bangle is from Egypt, as I can tell by its style of silver bands and ropes over filigree. BG’s account of its provenance (the story of the piece) is likely correct, as the North African Campaign in Egypt was a vital theater for the British and Commonwealth forces in WWII. The soldier who brought this gift back was likely one of those men, – and likely British or from the British Empire – who helped halt the Axis expansion toward the vital trade route of the Suez Canal.

The long and hard-fought desert battle in November and October of 1942 led to a decisive Allied victory at El Alamein under the notable British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery against the German-Italian Axis under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. The decisive victory in this battle was a major morale booster for the Allies and ended the threat to the Middle East. So the soldier who bought this for his loved one must have treasured this gift.

When I see souvenir jewelry like this, I am aware of a division between jewelry made for the tourist market (such as Vatican enamels) and jewelry that was actually worn by the women of the culture. In this case, this bangle was both. Muslim women are allowed to wear jewelry called “Dua,” protective works in gold or silver bearing phrases or passages from the Qur’anic verses in Arabic calligraphy. In this case, BG’s bracelet reads “Ya Mujeeb,” or “O Responder,” “O One Who Answers,” one of the 99 Beautiful Names of God, called the Asma al-Husna in the Islamic tradition. In essence, the bangle bears a sacred prayer: to be heard and to receive an answer.

Muslim women are allowed to wear both gold and silver, and this bangle is either .800 or .900 silver, meaning it is not of sterling quality but still contains a significant amount of silver. Islamic women are encouraged to wear “real” jewelry of modest means rather than costume jewelry. If a piece contains a sacred text, that piece is to be treated as a reminder of the One who holds power, not as an amulet with its own power to protect the wearer. When wearing pendants and bracelets of Dua jewelry engraved with Qur’anic verses, it is considered poor etiquette to wear such a piece into a restroom.

This piece dates from the 1930s to the late 1940s, as we can see from the unique tube-and-shaft pin closure, hand-wrought in the Middle East in the mid-20th century. The silver workmanship of wire filigree topped with silver bands, and the oxidation of the filigree in the depths of the bangle, point to a mid-20th-century date. I do not believe this piece is earlier than the 1940s, as Egyptian jewelry prior to that period was heavily influenced by Egyptian Revivalism following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 by Howard Carter, the British archaeologist and egyptologist (1874-1939) who discovered the intact tomb of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings. Carter died at only 64: seventeen years after he was the first person to enter the tomb 3,245 years following the young Pharaoh’s death. He did not succumb to the “Mummy’s Curse” although many suspected otherwise. With all the excitement around the opening of the tomb in the 1920s, “Pharoah Style” became the rage. BG’s bracelet has nothing to do with hieroglyphics, a fad that became popular across the globe after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, a discovery in whose immediate wake jewelry was produced for a world fascinated by ancient Egypt and its exotic hieroglyphs. 

Thus, this piece may have been purchased by a solider who had fought in the battle of El Alamein in the early 1940s, offered by a local who needed money, from an Egyptian woman who had worn the piece, or from an Egyptian jeweler. During that period, the majority of Egypt’s population was Muslim and followed the Sunni tradition of Islam. Today, Egypt has a population of more than 100 million majority Muslim people, making it one of the largest Muslim populations in the world.

With this wonderful background, redolent of a sacred phrase worked upon a type of jewelry worn to protect the wearer, one would think the value is higher than $350. However, many such pieces can be found in the market with the same WWII provenance as BG’s bracelet, as there were 195,000 Allied forces in Egypt and 116,000 Axis forces. Soldiers bought back many such objects, and therefore this bangle, although beautiful, is not rare.