A PROTO-ELAMITE SILVER APPLIQUE CIRCA LATE 4TH-3RD MILLENNIUM B.C.

拍品描述

A PROTO-ELAMITE SILVER APPLIQUÉ, SOUTH-WESTERN IRAN, CIRCA LATE 4TH-3RD MILLENNIUM B.C. Of bilateral composition, worked in repoussé from a single sheet of silver and finished with chased detail, the plaque takes the form of two confronted ram-like creatures whose bodies curl inwards to form opposing volutes, their hindquarters terminating in cloven hooves set on heart-shaped pads. The two animals share a single elevated head at the upper centre, modelled in higher relief and rendered Janus-fashion with two faces looking outward to either side, each with a prominent almond eye and a band of cross-hatched and zig-zag ornament running across the brow. A small projecting tab rises from the crown, pierced for suspension or attachment, and a raised circular boss occupies the centre of the field below the head. On each curling flank, two raptor protomes are worked in relief, their hooked beaks, rounded eyes and striated wing feathers clearly delineated. The hooves are bordered by a plaited band above and incised with a cruciform mark on each pad. The surface carries an even grey patination with cuprous and earthen accretions, several stress cracks along the folds, and minor losses to the thinned edges. The iconography belongs to the repertoire of composite animal imagery that defines Proto-Elamite visual culture. The doubled, mirror-image body with a single shared head is a device known from glyptic and small relief work of the period, in which the artist exploits symmetry to compress two beasts into one heraldic field. The shared head, treated as a double-faced mask, recalls the bicephalic and Janiform conventions used in the Susa and Tepe Yahya material for ovicaprid and feline subjects, where the animal is presented less as a naturalistic creature than as a heraldic emblem. The raptors set upon the flanks belong to the same tradition of predator-and-prey imagery that runs through fourth and third millennium Iranian art, in which birds of prey, lions and bulls are layered into compound compositions whose meaning is at once decorative, totemic and probably administrative, given the close relationship between such imagery and the sealings of the Proto-Elamite accounting system. The cruciform marks impressed on the hooves are consistent with the simple incised signs found across Proto-Elamite metalwork and may have functioned as ownership or workshop marks. Silver carried particular weight in the Proto-Elamite world. Worked from sheet by hammering and repoussé, it was a metal of restricted access in the Iranian plateau, drawn from sources in the Zagros and further east and reserved for objects of ceremonial, votive or elite-display character. Surviving silver from the period is rare in comparison with the much larger corpus of clay, stone and copper-alloy objects, and the survival of sheet-silver appliqués of this scale is correspondingly limited. The repoussé technique, raising relief from the reverse with chased finishing on the obverse, is among the earliest sophisticated uses of the metal in the region and stands at the head of a long Iranian tradition of silver sheet-work that continues through Achaemenid and Sasanian production. The function of such plaques is debated. The pierced tab and the thinness of the sheet suggest attachment, whether to a wooden ceremonial object, a textile, a piece of furniture, or a leather harness of high status. The closest comparanda, doubled animal plaques with shared heads and zoomorphic flanks, are generally associated with elite or ritual contexts in southern Iran during the formative period of the Proto-Elamite state. This appliqué exemplifies the heraldic compression of Proto-Elamite animal imagery, in which symmetry, doubling and the layering of one creature upon another are deployed to transform a recognisable beast into an emblem. Its survival in silver, a metal sparingly used in the period, places it among the more substantial witnesses to the early Iranian appetite for composite zoomorphic ornament in precious sheet metal. Length: 15cm

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