An Akinak Scabbard from Bactria

Abstract

An akinak scabbard, exceptional in form and material, ornamented with an elegantly executed and compositionally unusual image, was found by the South Tadjikistan Expedition in a votive deposit of one of the corridors of the Temple of the Oxus on the right bank of the Amu Dar'ia (Kobadian Raion, Tadjik SSR) (1) (Figure 1). The confluence of the Vakhsh and the Piandj was in antiquity guarded by a system of fortresses. It was near one of them, Takhti-Sangin (Stone Throne) or Takhti-Kubad (Throne of Kubad), that in 1877 local people found the famous Oxus Treasure, now in the British Museum. (2) In the intervening century no other finds of Achaemenid art have been made in this region.