(16-12-2016, 01:04 PM)Davidsch wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:Here's a picture of one being You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
@JKP.
So, my arguments do not impress. You can convince me, by finding a clear picture of two being used on the chain(s) as your pictures.
David, maybe I didn't express myself well enough (I was teasing about the chain).
I don't think the strigils were used in pairs. I think they were often made or stored in pairs (as shown by the examples) and that they may have been held as a pair by a bath girl. The bath girls were servants and slaves who carried the buckets, added the herbs, applied the oils, and brought the various bathing implements (including strigils) to the bathers. In ancient depictions, the baths are often shown with male slaves as the attendants, but in the middle ages, most of the bathing images show young women attending the bathers.
The nymph in the drawing with what looks like a diaphomous skirt (like bathing girls wore) or perhaps a wet skirt, isn't cleaning herself or someone else, she's simply holding the item. As shown in the bath mosaic with the two pairs of strigils (linked above), when there was artistic or symbolic intent, they were sometimes shown in pairs.
I have no idea what the VMS intent was, and I still think they resemble tongs or calipers more than anything else (which fits well with measurement or childbirth themes), but a semi-naked nymph near water holding a pair of tong-like shapes could be a bath girl holding a pair of strigils.