Object Notes

Ornamental bronze pins are another example of Luristanian bronze work employing animal imagery. The Dallas Museum of Art ram-headed example was cast by the lost-wax method in five pieces (each pair of horns, each animal head, and the pin itself).

This Luristanian horse bit makes an interesting comparison with a more elaborate Villanovan horse bit (1969.6), also in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art.

This bronze figurine, usually described as a standard finial, consists of a composite human figure and animals. The upper part of the figure holds two mythological animals of lion-monster form in the "master of animals" position.

This ornamental figure originally sat on the top of a ceremonial standard carried in ritual processions. The image, which combines human and animal elements, may represent deities associated with fertility and the powers of weather.

This bronze cart drawn by a pair of long-horned oxen is one of many examples of an artistic type well known from the early second millennium B.C.E.  Such models were probably votive offerings, to be left in shrines, sacred caches, or tombs.

Ram-headed rhytons, or drinking vessels originally based on animal horns, are common in the arts of northern Iran during the Late Bronze Age.

This kind of ceramic female figurine was quite common in Syria during the Bronze Age. The statuettes consist of standing frontal female figures that are nude, though usually wearing ornaments and headdresses.

The early growth of Neolithic farming communities in Anatolia is indicated by elaborate traditions of pottery dating back to the 6th millennium B.C.E.

Small idols such as this were created by preliterate people all over the prehistoric Mediterranean, predominantly out of materials such as stone, ceramic, or bone.