A Silver Bowl in the Ashmolean Museum

Abstract

THE silver bowl which is illustrated in Plate I was acquired by the Aslhmolean Museum in i964.1 It was said to have been form--erly in tlhe 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 siglht, it might seem to be. But closer inspection reveals some particulars of form and decoration which are not quite characteristic of attested Achaenienian works, but suggest a different history. Since no real reliance can be placed on the only statements of provenance which we have, it is frotn 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 mnm. 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. The interior is decorated with a chased design of two rampant and crossed lions within a roundel defined by two concentric circles, beyond which a band of plain metal is left within the bulge of the body. The exterior displays at the centre of the gently convex base an eirhteen-petalled incised rosette, or daisy, radiating from two concentric circles and itself forming the centre of a larger rosette of channelled rays which extend to the shoulder of the vessel. There the decoration ends. If one compares the two surfaces of the bowl, it is conspicuously clear that the radial ornamentation of the outside bears no relation in style or decorative intent to the lions of the interior. It differs also in technique: whereas the outlines and anatonmical details of the lions are delineated by chasing or hammering, the lines and grooves of the exterior, botlh radial and concentric, appear to have been at least in part engraved with a chisel or incised with a sharp point.2 It can also be seen that some of the deeper curves outlining the lions, and some short lengths of the circles wvhich enclose them, have been hammered with such force as to appear on the outside of the bowl,3 and their visible