HAN DYNASTY (206 BC-AD 220)

This sumptuous gilt-bronze ornament, cast in the form of a mountain inhabited by wild animals, would have decorated one of the tuning pegs of a se, a plucked string instrument popular during the Zhou and Han dynasties. A related Western Han gilt-bronze ornament depicting jagged mountain peaks inhabited by wild beasts from the collection of Shelby White and Leon Levy is illustrated by E. Bunker, W. Watt and Zhixin Sun in Nomadic Art of the Eastern Eurasion Steppes: The Eugene V. Thaw and Other New York Collections, New York, 2002, pp. 188-9, no. 179. Another related, but less elaborate example dated to the 2nd-1st century BC is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 1915.161.1.