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A Silver Bowl in the Ashmolean Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

R. W. Hamilton
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Extract

The silver bowl which is illustrated in Plate I was acquired by the Ashmolean Museum in 1964. It was said to have been formerly in the possession of a dealer in Teheran, who bought it in Hamadan. The story is too stereotyped to have much archaeological significance. Nevertheless it may be true; for there is nothing surprising, as we shall see, in a vessel of this form and character being found in the ancient capital of the Medes.

The bowl was described as “Achaemenian”; and so, at first sight, it might seem to be. But closer inspection reveals some particulars of form and decoration which are not quite characteristic of attested Achaemenian works, but suggest a different history. Since no real reliance can be placed on the only statements of provenance which we have, it is from form and decoration alone that the origins of the bowl may be inferred.

The bowl is somewhat abruptly articulated into a shallow container, almost flat below, and a broad flaring rim which springs from a sharply incurved shoulder (Fig. I, a). Of the total depth of about 34 mm. the container accounts for a little more than half, with a capacity of about seven fluid ounces, or one third of a pint. The bowl was thus designed to hold about as much liquid as could easily be drained at a draught. A residue would always have been trapped by the shoulder.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 1966 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1966

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References

1 Report of the Visitors 1964, pp. 10, 16Google Scholar and Plate I. Accession no. 1964.482. Diameter 165–170 mm.; depth 35 mm., weight 12¼ oz.

2 So at least it appears on inspection of the surface under a low-powered binocular microscope.

3 Plate I, a.

4 Mallowan, M. E. L., in I.L.N., 29 07, 1950, p. 182, Fig. 8Google Scholar; and Iraq XII (1950), p. 178Google Scholar. Latest publication in Nimrud and its Remains, 1966, p. 116, Pl. 59. Diameter 15·8–16·1 cmGoogle Scholar.

5 W. Andrae, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli V. Die Kleinfunde, Pl. 56 e. Cf. H. Luschey, Die Phiale, Fig. 3. The bowl had a small boss welded to the inside and filled with lead. Diameter 15·5 cm.

6 A. Haller, Ausgrabungen in Assur VII. Die Gräber und Grüfte, Pl. 22, c, d, e, from tomb 30; p. 110. Diameter 14·8 cm.

7 Mallowan, M. E. L., Iraq XIV, p. 5Google Scholar, Ashmolean accession no. 1951.30. Imperfect, but made up from large fragments giving the complete form. Diameter 11·8 cm.; recently discussed and illustrated in Nimrud and its Remains, Pl. 13 and p. 51.

8 Hrouda, B., Tell Halaf IV, Pl. 60, no. 138. Diameter 13·5 cmGoogle Scholar.

9 Lines, J., Iraq XVI, Pl. XXXVII, 7 and 8, and pp. 165–6Google Scholar.

10 Hrouda, B., Tell Halaf IV, Pl. 61, no. 170, and p. 100Google Scholar. On the same plate nos. 168 and 169, with slightly deeper containers, are still very nearly of the same form.

11 B.M. no. 124886: R. D. Barnett and W. Forman, Assyrische Palastreliefs, Pl. 97. On B.M. no. 124920 the queen is seen drinking from a similar bowl but with gadrooned or incised container (cf. Fig. 4, below, from Deve Huyuk). Best photograph: ibid. Pl. 105. The carving in each case still shows clearly the shallow bowl, sharp shoulder and flaring rim.

12 Accession no. 1913.677. Woolley, C. L., in L.A.A.A. VII (1914–1916), Pl. XXI, pp. 115–129Google Scholar. Chased and punched bronze; rim diameter 16·2 cm., depth 3·4 cm.

13 Mallowan, M. E. L., Iraq XII (1950), pp. 170 and 183, Pl. XXXII, 2Google Scholar. Diameter 17 cm.

14 Oates, Joan, Iraq XXI (1959), Pl. XXXVII, 59, and p. 132Google Scholar.

15 After the original drawing by Henry Layard reproduced in Barnett, R. D. and Falkner, M., The Sculptures of Tiglathpileser III, Pl. XLVII, aGoogle Scholar. Note that Ashurnasirpal (883–859 B.c.) drank from a bowl that was nearly hemispherical and without a shoulder (Fig. 5, b) cf. B.M. 124564–6 and 118928: Assyrische Palastreliefs, Pls. 28 and 29.

16 Schmidt, E. F., Persepolis II, Pl. 68, no. 1Google Scholar.

17 E. F. Schmidt, ibid. Pl. 70 C.

18 Fig. 6 a, the shallowest of the three vessels, is a silver bowl from the famous coffin burial at Susa, which contained two Phoenician coins about 350–332 B.C.: de Morgan, J., M.D.P. VIII, p. 43, Pl. IIIGoogle Scholar.

b is a bronze bowl in the Ashmolean, 1913.594; made in two pieces with repoussé ornament on the outer skin. Diameter 11·8 cm. From a cemetery at Deve Huyuk dated by Woolley sixth to fourth century B.C.: L.A.A.A. VII, p. 119, group 15Google Scholar.

c is a plain silver bowl from the Oxus Treasure: Dalton, O. M., The Treasure of the Oxus (2nd ed.), p. 45, no. 182, Fig. 72Google Scholar.

19 Black serpentine octagonal prism from a foundation deposit in the temple of Shushinak at Susa: de Mecquenem, R., M.D.P. VII (1905) Pl. XXII, opp. p. 95Google Scholar. Also Delaporte, L., Catalogue des Cylindres I, Pl. 31, 11Google Scholar.

20 R. Ghirshman, Persia from the Origins to Alexander the Great, Chap. V, no. 556. Cf. addorsed Hons in a roundel in London: B.M.Q. 22 (1960), Pl. VIIGoogle Scholar.

21 Crossed rampant goats on a square plaque, horns interlocked: I.L.N. 5 12, 1964, p. 897Google Scholar, Fig. 3.

22 a Sinçerli: von Luschan, F., Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli IV, p. 380Google Scholar, Fig. 277.

b Ziwiyeh; from an embossed gold plaque. Cf. W. Culican, Medes and Persians, Pl. 24.

c Silver bowl: Ashmolean Museum, 1964.482.

d Bronze mirror: H. Hoffman, The Norbert Schimmel Collection, no. 74. I am grateful to Mr. Schimmel for permission to discuss and illustrate the design of the mirror.

e Susa: Perrot, and Chipiez, , Histoire de l'Art V Pl. XI (colour)Google Scholar. Also in colour: R. Ghirshman, Persia from the Origins to Alexander the Great, no. 193.

23 Apart from the quite different rendering of the shoulders and hindquarters there is a degree of artifice in the design of the mirror, and of refinement in its execution, which are not matched on the bowl but suggest the work of a more mannered, elegant and perhaps more courtly artist. I would describe as artifice the deliberate contortion of the bodies in Fig. 12 to produce the attractive configuration of four background spaces between the opposing beasts. The same artifice suggested the interlocking of their tails. On the Ashmolean bowl a less subtle scheme gives only two central voids of no particular interest; and there is a lack of finesse in the jumble of curves about the hindquarters, which the artist of the mirror would have reduced to a more orderly pattern. On the mirror the encircling twelve-petalled rosettes show affinity with the courtly art of Persepolis, where the identical motif forms the pervasive border of many staircase reliefs and other architectural contexts.

24 Von Luschan, F., Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, IVGoogle Scholar. They are shown in Plates XLVII and XLVIII, in Plate LVII below, and in Plate LVII above.

25 F. von Luschan, op. cit. p. 380, Fig. 277. The characteristic wrinkles under the eye are perceptible but not very clear in the photograph forming that figure. They are more sharply outlined in the lighting of the front view given in Fig. 270 on p. 371 and also in the photograph which illustrates the earlier lion, from Hilani III, on Pl. LVII, below; a later photograph of the last by Max Hirmer forms Pl. 132 in E. Akurgal's The Art of the Hittites. The earliest of the lions in the new style, a pair from the Burgthor, has a rather different and more crowded pattern of wrinkles. Von Luschan dates them about the middle of the eighth century.

26 Presumably in part by exportation of such works as the bronze rhyton, with a very similar lion's head, which was found at Gordion in a tomb dated by convergent indications to about the end of the eighth century: Young, R. S. in A.J.A. 62 (1958), frontispiece and pp. 152–4Google Scholar.

27 Budge, Assyrian Sculpture in the British Museum, Pl. VI.

28 Above, p. oo, n. 22. The plaque may of course have been worked long before it found its way to Ziwiyeh.

29 E. A. Wallis Budge, Assyrian Sculpture in the British Museum, Pl. XIII; R. D. Barnett and W. Forman, Assyrische Palastreliefs, Pl. 32.

30 Barnett and Forman, op. cit., Pl. 92.

31 Schmidt, E. F., Persepolis I, Pl. 20 and passimGoogle Scholar.

32 Shepherd, Dorothy G., in Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art vol. 48 (1961), p. 23Google Scholar and Fig. 12: “Lapis lazuli sculpture of Mede and lion”.

33 Nineveh, palace of Ashurbanipal: R. D. Barnett and W. Forman, Assyrische Palastreliefs, Pl. 94.

34 Malatya (9th century): The Arts Council, 1964 Hittite Art and the Antiquities of Anatolia, no. 215; the motif is discussed at length by Akurgal, E., Remarques stylistiques sur les reliefs de Malatya (Istanbul 1946) pp. 84–9Google Scholar.

35 Ziwiyeh (8th–7th century): Kantor, H., Cincinnati Art Museum Bulletin, vol. V (1957), p. 11, Fig. 2Google Scholar; also p. 8, Fig. 1; Cf. A. Godard, Le Trésor de Ziwiyeh, Figs. 81–3.

36 Oxus Treasure: Dalton, O. M., The Treasure of the Oxus, p. 82Google Scholar, no. 18; Pl. VII.

37 From a gold strip in the British Museum published by Barnett, R. D. as probably Median: Iranica Antiqua II (1962), p. 78 and PL I, aGoogle Scholar.

38 Above p. oo, note oo.

39 B. B. Piotrovsky, Iskusstvo Urartu, Pl. XXV.