Lot Essay
At the center of the disk is a repoussé figure of a bearded deity striding to the left, the surface embellished throughout with incised details. He wears a short patterned kilt and has a pair of wings rising up from his shoulders and a second pair descending along his legs. In his right hand he holds the hind leg of a feline, and in his left, that of a mountain goat. In the space between his legs are two fish arranged tête-bêche. The scene is framed by a raised dotted border, and the flange is perforated along its length. The iconography owes much to the Neo-Assyrian world, especially cylinder seals (see for example nos. 328-331 in D. Collon, Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum, Cylinder Seals, V, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Periods).
A companion piece with an identical figure and similar iconography is now in the National Museum of Asian Art, pl. 21 in T.S. Kawami and J. Olbrantz, Breath of Heaven, Breath of Earth, Ancient Near Eastern Art from American Collections. The authors suggest that it was attached to another backing and may have been part of decorative horse gear. Both disks were once part of the collection of Ayoub Rabenou, an antiquarian from Tehran, who befriended the Ali Khan and the Vali of Pushti-kuh, and thus was granted unprecedented access to many ancient sites in the Luristan region of Western Iran (see "A prelude to the Persian Art Exhibition: Bronzes," in The Illustrated London News, 6 September 1930, pp. 388-91). Luristan bronzes collected by Ayoub Rabenou are now part of the permanent collection of museums around the world, including the Iran (Bastan) National Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
A companion piece with an identical figure and similar iconography is now in the National Museum of Asian Art, pl. 21 in T.S. Kawami and J. Olbrantz, Breath of Heaven, Breath of Earth, Ancient Near Eastern Art from American Collections. The authors suggest that it was attached to another backing and may have been part of decorative horse gear. Both disks were once part of the collection of Ayoub Rabenou, an antiquarian from Tehran, who befriended the Ali Khan and the Vali of Pushti-kuh, and thus was granted unprecedented access to many ancient sites in the Luristan region of Western Iran (see "A prelude to the Persian Art Exhibition: Bronzes," in The Illustrated London News, 6 September 1930, pp. 388-91). Luristan bronzes collected by Ayoub Rabenou are now part of the permanent collection of museums around the world, including the Iran (Bastan) National Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.