CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C.

Details

A NEO-ELAMITE VOTIVE PLAQUE
CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C.
Preserving portions of two figural registers along the right and lower border of a right-angled finished surface, likely a wall-mounted votive offering, the figures all moving to the left, the upper register with the legs of a taloned monster, perhaps a bird-griffin or a scorpion-man, and a bearded male wearing a short fringed kilt, his right arm reaching forward, the lower with a two-winged hero gripping the wing of a rearing winged lion before him, stepping on to its left hind leg with his right foot, the hero clad in a fringed and belted short garment and a peaked horned tiara, a scimitar in his lowered left hand, the lion with its tongue lolling, fiercely bearings its teeth, its left forepaw on the wing of the hero before him, its right forepaw in his grip, the four-winged hero clad as the other, symmetrically positioned between another feline monster to the left, one forepaw gripped in his left hand, the other at his wing, an inscription before him in Neo-Elamite cuneiform, reading in part, "...of Kidin-Hupan"
7 1/8 in. (18.1 cm.) wide

Provenance

with Marc Perc Peretz, Saarbrücken, Germany, 1974.

Sale room notice

This lot may not be exported out of the United States without first receiving an export license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Lot Essay

This plaque relates closely in style and subject to art of the Neo- Assyrian Empire, centered in Assur on the Tigris and occupying the heart of Mesopotamia. The language of the cuneiform inscription, however, designates this as Neo-Elamite, a smaller kingdom to the South and East of Assyria, with its capital in Susa.

For a related apotropaic plaque with a perforation for suspension, of similar scale and style, preserving two male smiting figures clad in short fringed and belted garments, see no. 142, p. 201 in Harper, Aruz and Tallon, eds., The Royal City of Susa, Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. As Muscarella notes, op. cit., "although manifestly of Elamite background - as evidenced by the style ... this scene matches, in iconography and in all details of style, one commonly seen in Neo-Assyrian art."

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