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Lot Essay
This bowl is related to a large group of Hellenistic silver vessels of similar shape, all thought to be of Eastern origin. A number of them are in the Getty Museum, cf. M. Pfrommer, Metalwork from the Hellenized East, Catalogue of the Collections, J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1993, nos 1-16, in particular no. 14 which has an almost identical design but is a considerably smaller bowl.
The inscription was added in the early 4th Century A.D. and is unusual in that it is not written in the standard form of middle Persian (Pahlavi) script nor in any other well known script such as Parthian or Sogdian. For a comparable example, cf. G. Azarpay and W. B. Henning, 'A Hunting Scene on an Inscribed Sassanian Silver Vessel', Iranica Antiqua, VII, 1967, pp. 142-152, pls XXXI-XXXIII, for a silver phiale with a similar inscription sharing the spelling for the ideogram for drachms, and the distinctive shape for the numeral 100. The script is evidently an otherwise unknown provincial variant belonging to the same family as the scripts mentioned above, all of which ultimately derive from Aramaic.
The inscription was added in the early 4th Century A.D. and is unusual in that it is not written in the standard form of middle Persian (Pahlavi) script nor in any other well known script such as Parthian or Sogdian. For a comparable example, cf. G. Azarpay and W. B. Henning, 'A Hunting Scene on an Inscribed Sassanian Silver Vessel', Iranica Antiqua, VII, 1967, pp. 142-152, pls XXXI-XXXIII, for a silver phiale with a similar inscription sharing the spelling for the ideogram for drachms, and the distinctive shape for the numeral 100. The script is evidently an otherwise unknown provincial variant belonging to the same family as the scripts mentioned above, all of which ultimately derive from Aramaic.