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Bronze mirror (Courtesy of the Vedat Nedim Tör Museum, Istanbul)
Bronze mirror
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 134
- Date
- Early fifth century BC?, Late Lydian (Persian)
- Museum
- Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, 4572
- Museum Inventory No.
- 4572
- Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
- IAM 4572
- Material
- Bronze/Copper Alloy
- Object Type
- Metalwork
- Metalwork Type
- Cosmetic or Surgical Implement
- Site
- Sardis
- Sector
- Nec
- Trench
- Butler Tomb 213
- Locus
- Butler Tomb 213
- Description
- Large bronze mirror. Circular disk with reflecting surfaces on both sides; the surfaces are slightly convex, so the image would be smaller than natural. Border is decorated with geometric designs (on one side, guilloche and triangles; on the other, guilloche and meander). Around edge of mirror, beads attached to mirror by means of small spikes; many beads missing, leaving the spikes exposed. Handle terminates in calf’s head, and is attached to the mirror disk with a separate clamp, decorated with two horse protomes back-to-back. Handle inlaid with alternating rings of different metals (Butler: “bronze, iron, and silver;” Oliver: “perhaps silver or antimony”). Diameter of disk 0.215 m, length of mirror 0.355 m.
- Comments
- Excavated at Sardis in 1911 by the Butler Expedition, in Tomb 213. This tomb also contained the gold rattle No. 135, another bronze mirror, a silver Achaemenid bowl (IAM 9740), another silver bowl, a pyramidal stamp seal with gold mount (IAM 4522), two gold rings (IAM 4548, 4550), a chain of gold and carnelian beads (IAM 4571), a ceramic “ampulla,” a ceramic lamp, and seven stone alabastra. The form, with a handle ending in a calf’s head terminal, and a round “working element” attached by means of animals, is reminiscent of the bronze incense burner from the Lydian Treasure, No. 173. The calf’s-head terminals are common in Achaemenid-period metalwork in Anatolia (cf. Nos. 192, 193). The horse protomes have been compared to column imposts at Iranian sites such as Pasargadae and Persepolis, and seem a particularly Achaemenid motif.
- See Also
- Baughan, “Lydian Burial Customs”.
- Bibliography
- Butler 1922, 84, ill. 82; Oliver 1971; Dusinberre 2003, 151-2, fig. 58.
- Author
- NDC