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The Decorated Bronze Strip from Gushchi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

R. W. Hamilton
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Extract

The interesting bronze “belt” or decorated strip in Urartian style which was discovered at Gushchi near Lake Urmia in 1905, and which has twice been illustrated in Anatolian Studies, is generally known only from the photograph of one small fragment which was first published in an obscure Armenian journal in 1912 and has since been successively reproduced by B. A. Kuftin in 1944, G. M. A. Hanfmann in 1956, and R. D. Barnett in 1963. At least four other fragments, however, of the same object are known to exist. One is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and three have recently been received in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford (Plate I, a). These still do not make up the whole object, but they enable its original dimensions to be calculated with some assurance and the character of its ornament to be described exactly.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 15 , December 1965 , pp. 41 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1965

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References

1 Kuftin, B. A., Urartskii kolumbarii u podoshvy Ararata … in Viestnik Gossudarstvennogo muzeya Gruzii, XIII B (Tiflis, 1943)Google Scholar, being a volume of the Bulletin of the Tiflis Museum. An English summary of the work by Barnett, R. D. is in Anatolian Studies, XIII, 1963, pp. 153–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 AS. VI, pl. XX, 2.

3 AS. XIII, p. 198, fig. 48Google Scholar.

4 As noted by Hanfmann, ; AS. VI, p. 211Google Scholar. M.M.A. accession no. 52.123 (Rogers Fund, 1952). Photograph in Ghirshman, R., Persia from the origins to Alexander the Great, ill, 572Google Scholar. I am indebted to the Curator of the Ancient Near East Department of the Metropolitan Museum for a photographic print very kindly supplied, and for permission to include the fragment amongst those studied here.

5 Deposited on loan in 1963 by courtesy of the National Museum of Wales from the Howard de Walden Collection: Joubert, Felix, F.S.A., Scot., The Collection of Arms and Armour formed by Lord Howard de Walden (London, 1923), p. 8Google Scholar, no. 48 “a bronze waist belt”. Two of the fragments, those on the left in Plate I, a, can be joined together.

6 That is, furrowed with a blunt chisel, of which the short moves forward can be seen under magnification, cf. Maryon, Herbert, Metalwork and enamelling, 113 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 This limitation of punched work in metal of a certain weight is well illustrated by contrast with the fineness of detail achieved by approximately contemporary Italian copper-smiths, using sheet metal considerably less than half a millimetre thick, who could produce minutely delineated motifs on funerary shields and similar objects by simple punching without engraving.

8 A break near the left end being disregarded.

9 An observant reader will notice a minor slip by the craftsman in the third spacer motif from the left.

10 Although the two pieces have not been brought physically together, Mrs. Prudence Harper of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has very kindly compared a tracing of the left edge of C with the right edge of B and found that the torn edges of both pieces fit exactly, so that little doubt is possible that the join is a real one.

11 It is to be noted that the strip is not quite square ended.

12 AS. VI, Pl. XX, 2; XIII, p. 198, fig. 48Google Scholar.

13 Some of these have been used in modern times for metal pins to fix the fragments to a wooden mount, and the heads of a few of them remain rusted in the bronze.

14 Reported by Özgüç, T. in Belleten, XXV, 1961, p. 272, figs. 23 and 24Google Scholar.

15 Recently by Piotrovsky, B. B., Vanskoe Tsarstvo (1959), pp. 249–50Google Scholar, line figs. 85 (Zakim), 86 (Ani-Pemza); Iskusstvo Urartu (Leningrad, 1962)Google Scholar, Pl. XXXII (Zakim); Barnett, R. D., Iranica Antiqua, II (1962), pp. 82, 87, line figs. 2, 4Google Scholar.

16 Iskusstvo Urartu, pp. 73–5, figs. 42, 43.

17 Burney, C. A., Anatolian Studies, VIII (1958), pp. 211–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Pl. XXXIII; and Hulin, P., AS. IX, pp. 189 ffGoogle Scholar.

18 The other two in Piotrovsky, , Karmir Blur, IIGoogle Scholar (Erivan, 1950, being second in the series of “Archaeological Excavations in Armenia” published by the Nauk Academy of the Armenian S.S.R.), pp. 37–8, figs. 19, 20.

19 Martirosyan, and Mnatsakanyan, , Nor-Areshskie Urartskii Kolumbarii in Izvestia Akademia Nauk Armenyanskoi S.S.R., 1958, no. 10, pp. 63–84Google Scholar. Summarised in English, with illustrations, by Barnett, R. D. in AS. XIII, 1963, pp. 194–198Google Scholar, figs. 41, 46, 47.

20 AS. XIII, p. 197, fig. 46, top leftGoogle Scholar.

21 Described by B. A. Kuftin, see n. 1 on p. 41 above.

22 Belleten, XXV, p. 274.Google Scholar

23 P. 45 above, n. 15.

24 See p. 49 below.

25 Bronzes from Toprak Kale: Iraq, XII (1950)Google Scholar, Pls. V and VII, 3; masonry relief (680–645 B.C.) from Adılcevaz: AS. VIII (1958)Google Scholar, Pl XXXIII; shield of Sardur II (760–733 B.C.) at Karmir Blur: B. B. Piotrovsky, Iskusstvo Urartu, Pls. XXIII and XXIV; wall painting at Arin-Berd: ibid., Pl. XXXI.

26 F. Th.-Dangin, Arslan Tosh, Pl IV; Til Barsib, Pl. XLVII; Khorsabad: H. Frankfort, Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, Pls. 77A and 95.

27 The shield is illustrated in Iraq, XII, Pl. X, 1, but on a scale too small to show details. I am grateful to Dr. R. D. Barnett, Keeper of Western Asiatic Antiquities in the British Museum, for permission to publish a drawing of one of the bulls made from the shield itself.

28 Piotrovsky, B. B., Iskusstvo Urartu, p. 75, fig. 43Google Scholar. On the same piece a bull carrying another deity seems also to be saddled; and so are wild bulls in a hunting scene on one of the Nur Aresh (Arin-berd) belts: ibid., p. 76, fig. 44 (the same in AS. XIII, p. 197, fig. 46). An approximate chronological context for the Karmir Blur bronze belts is suggested by the notable iconographic conformity of one of them (Piotrovsky, op. cit., fig. 42) with the stone relief of Adılcevaz, associated with inscriptions of Rusa II (680–645 B.C.).

29 Akurgal, Ekrem, Späthethitische Bildkunst, p. 47, figs. 38 and 39Google Scholar. See also Brown, W. L., The Etruscan Lion, pp. 103–4Google Scholar, for a full list of eastern and western examples.

30 Shown in a line drawing by Piotrovsky, B. B., Iskusstvo Urartu, p. 69, fig. 40Google Scholar, and more or less clearly visible on photographs of the shield: ibid., Pl. XXII.

31 With difficulty detectable on some of the lions only; drawn as a loop very much as on the Gushchi belt.

32 Such as the Scorpion-man seen drawing a bow on a carved stele of Nebuchadrezzar I (c. 1150 B.C.) in the British Museum: King, Boundary Stones, Pls. LXXXIII and XCI.

33 Özgüç, T., Belleten, XXV, p. 273Google Scholar.

34 P. 45 above, n. 15.

35 Minns, , Scythians and Greeks, pp. 171–2, fig. 65Google Scholar.

36 Above p. 48, n. 25.

37 Belleten, XXV (1961), p. 274Google Scholar.

38 Iraq, XIV (1952), p. 140, fig. 15Google Scholar.

39 AS. XIII (1963), 197–8, figs. 46, 47Google Scholar.

40 Sennacherib: B. M. 124780, 124787, etc. Assyrian Sculpture in the British Museum from Shalmaneser III to Sennacherib, Pls. XLVI, XLIII, etc.; Ashurbanipal: B.M. 124875, 124868–9, H. R. Hall, Babylonian and Assyrian Sculpture … Pls. XLVII–XLIX.

41 P. 46 above, n. 19.