TWO NEAR PAIRS OF URARTIAN BRONZE QUIVERS CIRCA 8TH CENTURY B.C.

拍品描述

TWO NEAR-PAIR URARTIAN BRONZE QUIVERS, EASTERN ANATOLIA, CIRCA 8TH CENTURY B.C. Of elongated cylindrical form, each quiver constructed from a single sheet of bronze rolled and seamed along one side, tapering slightly toward the closed lower terminal and open at the upper end where the arrows would have been drawn. The bronze retains a deep green cuprite and malachite patina on one example and a darker, more olive-toned surface with silvery highlights on the other, the two closely matched in scale, proportion, and decorative programme without being identical in condition or in the fine execution of their ornament. The surface of each is organised into a series of horizontal registers separated by pairs and triplets of raised ribs, the intervening bands filled with incised and lightly repoussé friezes of animals in profile. Registers of horsemen, hounds, and quadrupeds, likely lions and stags in procession, alternate with narrower bands of zigzag and hatched geometric ornament. The figural bands are worked in a schematic linear idiom, the beasts shown at full stretch with elongated bodies and small heads, arranged in continuous files that circle the vessel. The upper rim of each retains traces of the folded reinforcement edge, with small perforations for the suspension fittings that would have secured the quiver to a belt or to the side of a chariot. Bronze quivers of this type are among the most distinctive metal products of the kingdom of Urartu, which flourished from the ninth to the seventh century B.C. across the highlands of eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and north-western Iran, with its heartland around Lake Van and its principal citadels at Tušpa, Rusahinili, and Ayanis. Urartian bronzework was a state industry of considerable technical sophistication, drawing on the metal resources of the Armenian highlands and supplying the royal arsenals of successive kings. Quivers, shields, helmets, and belts were produced in workshops attached to the citadels and were both used in warfare and dedicated as votive offerings in temples, where excavations at Karmir Blur, Ayanis, and Toprakkale have recovered comparable material, in some cases inscribed with the names of ruling kings. The friezes of galloping horsemen and processional animals belong to a shared visual language of the ancient Near East in the eighth century, in which the imagery of the hunt and the cavalry parade served as an assertion of royal and military prestige. On Urartian arms, such scenes carried a specifically dynastic charge, aligning the bearer with the king's own martial iconography as it appeared on temple gates, thrones, and dedicatory shields. The choice of bronze, worked in thin sheet and decorated with fine tracer and punch, reflects the Urartian preference for a lightweight, visually elaborate parade armour distinct from the heavier plate traditions of Assyria to the south, and the survival of such objects in matched or near-matched pairs suggests deposition together, whether in a tomb, an armoury, or a temple treasury. These two quivers exemplify the parade equipment of the Urartian kingdom at its cultural height, in which the arms of the elite cavalry were treated as bearers of dynastic imagery as much as instruments of war. Their close correspondence in form and decoration, without exact identity, is characteristic of workshop production in which pieces were made in sets but finished individually, and their survival as a near-pair is uncommon in the market. Dimensions: Height: 68 cm. Height on stand: 76 cm.

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