A BACTRIAN ALABASTER RITUAL DISC SHAPED IDOL CIRCA LATE 3RD-EARLY 2ND MILLENNIUM B.C.

拍品描述

A BACTRIAN ALABASTER DISC IDOL, CENTRAL ASIA, CIRCA LATE 3RD-EARLY 2ND MILLENNIUM B.C. Of circular form, cut as a flat disc from a single block of banded alabaster and worked to a smooth finish on both faces. The stone displays pronounced natural striations running in undulating bands of cream, honey, pale grey and warm ochre, with darker mineral inclusions and pockets of unpolished matrix breaking the surface along one edge. A single incised groove crosses the face on the diagonal, cut cleanly into the stone and running from edge to edge. The perimeter is rounded and softened, the two faces essentially parallel, giving the object the character of a solid lens or thick tablet rather than a plaque. The disc belongs to a small and distinctive corpus of stone objects recovered from the Bronze Age culture of ancient Bactria and Margiana, the region corresponding broadly to modern northern Afghanistan, southern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Their exact function remains debated. The forms are too heavy and too finely finished to be utilitarian, and their find contexts, where recorded, are generally associated with elite burials and ceremonial deposits. They are usually interpreted as ritual or votive objects, and the incised line on the present example, deliberately placed and carefully executed, is consistent with the schematic markings found on other discs of the type, which may carry symbolic rather than representational meaning. The choice of banded alabaster is significant. The stone was worked across the wider region from the third millennium onwards for vessels, cosmetic containers and ceremonial objects intended for high-status use, valued for the way its translucency and natural banding animate the surface under light. In Bactrian production, alabaster and chlorite were the preferred materials for objects associated with ritual and elite deposition, and the survival of the polished surface here, together with the accidents of the stone itself, place this disc within that tradition of prestige lithic craft. The composite "Bactrian princess" figures, the columnar handled weights, and the small stone discs and plaques all share a common material vocabulary and a common context of use. This disc exemplifies the restrained, geometric strand of Bactrian stoneworking, in which the natural beauty of the material is allowed to carry the object and human intervention is reduced to essential form and a single deliberate mark. It stands as a characteristic survival of the Oxus civilisation's ceremonial repertoire, in which meaning was carried as much by material and geometry as by figuration. Dimensions: 24cm

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