Sarmatian Roundels and Sarmatian Art

Abstract

OF A CERTAIN tribe of nomads Herodotus wrote: Their arms are all either of gold or brass. For their spearpoints, and arrowheads, and for their battle-axes, they make use of brass; for headgear, belts, and girdles, of gold. So too with the caparison of their horses, they give them breastplates of brass, but employ gold about the reins, the bit, and the cheek-plates.' A splendid roundel recently acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art must once have been a glittering adornment in such a set of trappings (Figure I). The roundel, 13. I cm. in diameter, is of silver covered with gold foil, on a bitumen backing originally covered with iron; turquoise stones or colored paste inlays, not completely preserved, decorate the border and the inner zones (see technical notes at end of article). While the repousse design at first glance looks abstract, it is actually composed of the figures of five animals (Figure 2). At the center, one, probably a deer, is coiled up so that its head, in profile, faces its rear legs; its front legs are bent one to each side. A circle of archshaped inlays separates the deer from the four feline animals that creep nose to tail around the outer zone of the roundel, their feet lying along the ring of archshaped cells at the edge of the disk. These animals of the outer zone have frontally depicted heads and profile bodies. They are virtually identical except that one opposed pair, probably lions, has teardrop-shaped eyes and rounded ears, while the other opposed pair has rounded eyes and teardrop-shaped ears. These last seem to be griffins, for they have bird beaks rather than feline muzzles. The bodies of the animals are composed ofseaprate geometric forms placed in proximity to each other; eyes, ears, ribs, and feet are inlay cells with clear-cut shapes like the other elements of the animals' bodies. The inner and outer circles of arch-shaped inlays complete the surface patterning and coloring. This even distribution of pattern and color produces the impression of abstract decoration that first strikes one. Such an impression is augmented by the differences in the colors of the inlays; this may have been an intention of the object's creator and not an accident of time. In its present state, the griffins seem to have inlays of lighter color at the ribs and darker color in the hindquarters, while the lions have darker ribs and lighter hindquarters. If these contrasts were intentional, they would seem to favor again the decorative effect rather than the content, for the color differences tear the animals apart rather than make them more readable. Although the roundel is said to have come from Iran, its closest parallels are objects discovered in Russia. A pair of cast gold roundels in the treasure of Peter the Great, in the Hermitage, Leningrad, is probably not far removed from the sources of what may be called Sarmatian roundels of Siberian type.2 The central animal of the Siberian pair, again a