http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A0PDoKkqRlRQGGYAzPqJzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Droman%2Bcavalry%2Btomb%26_adv_prop%3Dimage%26va%3Droman%2Bcavalry%2Btomb%26fr%3Daaplw%26tab%3Dorganic%26ri%3D41&w=150&h=167&imgurl=img65.imageshack.us%2Fimg65%2F9673%2Fsassanianbowl0jk.th.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.totalwar.org%2Fvb%2Fshowthread.php%3F62794-Why-does-all-cavalry-get-the-quot-Effective-against-armour-quot-trait&size=6.4+KB&name=Re%3A+Why+does+all+cavalry+get+the+%26quot%3BEffective+against+armour%26quot%3B+trait%3F&p=roman+cavalry+tomb&oid=790d416886ca2dabd882995edd373380&fr2=&fr=aaplw&tt=Re%253A%2BWhy%2Bdoes%2Ball%2Bcavalry%2Bget%2Bthe%2B%2526quot%253BEffective%2Bagainst%2Barmour%2526quot%253B%2Btrait%253F&b=31&ni=96&no=41&ts=&tab=organic&sigr=13ounu94v&sigb=142jncjkb&sigi=11mvg4hft&.crumb=8ofeobKs4xQ
Found this on a search and wondered if it is some copy/ RTW nonsense or a genuine item
Roy
http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/9673/sassanianbowl0jk.th.jpg
Might work better!!
Roy
Yes it is a bowl that is attributed as Persian from the Sasanian period.
Why do you ask?
If it's "gosh these are lancers but they are not cataphracts" they you need to know that there are lots of Parthian and Sasanian images of such 'light' lancers. Most of the horse archers, armoured or otherwise, would have had a lance as well.
Tom..
Oooh Tom I agree with you that some at least of the Parthian horse archers have lancers. Never got me far with Phil or Duncan though!
However, I confess to never having seen this bowl before (which I think is Sasanain. Any date? Any books that contain it?/
Roy
It's in Tabriz
http://rambambashi.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/azerbaijan-museum-tabriz/
high res image
http://www.livius.org/a/1/iran/sasanian_plate_warriors2_mus_tabriz.jpg
Like most such bowls it probably shows an image from a famous story, or a myth. The combatants here are a king (on the left, I forget which) and a noble so probably not LH(F) :-).
Nigel is pretty convinced that the stripes on the arms and legs of the chap on the right are fabric, others think that they are "cataphract" armour. I think that Nigel is right and that this is an incident whilst hunting (you wear body armour when hunting lions and boar).
Regards,
Tom..
Brilliant Tom, any more hidden gems?
The figure getting speared is strongly reminiscent of the Parthian nobles that are shown being defeated by the Sasanians.
Roy
Actually both participants look very like the rock reliefs
Jim
Quote from: Jim Webster on September 16, 2012, 05:26:53 PM
Actually both participants look very like the rock reliefs
Which is partly why I suspect it might be a fake. Specifically, one inspired by the figures on the battle-scene at Firuzabad - the defeated figure on this plate is very like the Parthians in the rock-relief.
I am suspicious also because I haven't previously seen a Sasanian combat scene like this that's not strictly profile - like Firuzabad and all the other rock-reliefs. The three-quarter view of the defated horseman, the odd arrangement of the cuirass (or whatever) around his lower torso, the suspicion that the victor's sleeves are a misunderstanding of laminated armpieces tweaked to match the zig-zags on his skirts: I don't trust this piece.
To me it had Firuzabad written all over it. As for fake, stylistically it doesn't look much like anything else I've seen, as you say, the defeated horseman is too much a three-quarter view for me to be comfortable with it
Jim
And yet the horses are rendered so perfectly. If fake it be then why not just replicate a side view?
R
it is a difficult one.
The format,the bottom of a bowl doesn't really lend itself to a Firuzabad style work, you have to bring things in and one way of doing this and filling everything is to make them more three-quarter.
But that might provoke an original artist as well as a forger
Jim
Some other pictures from the museum in question: http://www.pbase.com/k_amj/azerbaijanmuseum
You might find some of Soudavar's work interesting, he has a political message but is a good scholar.
See:
http://www.soudavar.com/index_files/Page368.htm
particularly:
http://www.soudavar.com/Canepa%20review.pdf
http://www.soudavar.com/Iranica%20Antiqua%202009%20-%20Soudavar.pdf
enjoy,
Tom..
Quote from: aligern on September 16, 2012, 10:20:18 PM
And yet the horses are rendered so perfectly. If fake it be then why not just replicate a side view?
Well, I think that one technique forgers often use is to amalgamate details from different works. So if this
is in fact a forgery, I'd assume the forger copied a falling horse and rider from somewhere without realising that they didn't really quite fit the Sasanian style.
There's also the defeated man's face - can anyone suggest a Sasanian face that matches that?
I'd quite like to be wrong, this is an attractive piece that would be very useful for Sasanian military studies, of anyone can come up with stylistic parallels or firm provenance information. I'm just not quite sure I believe it, yet.
I was watching 'Treasures of Rome' (or some similar title BBC prog on the history of Roman art) last night and was immediately struck by the similarities in style between this and Late Roman gold and silver plates.
Tom..
Tom, put up a few Roman silver plates that you think match? Is it possible to identify the Sasanian king? Is it possible that an artist rendered the falling rider as a Roman in a Roman style and the Persian in a more Persian style ??
The arrow in the fallen horse looks just like the arrows in the lions on the Assyrian lion hunt in the BM. Are other Sasanian fallen horses/wounded animals represented with the arrowhead thus?
If its a forgery and the artist has copied a Sasanian rock relief then what has he copied for the falling horse/rider??
It would be conclusive if we could come up with another genuine item of art that had the fallen horse/ rider from a different context.
Roy
Quote from: aligern on September 20, 2012, 09:49:33 AMIf its a forgery and the artist has copied a Sasanian rock relief then what has he copied for the falling horse/rider??
It would be conclusive if we could come up with another genuine item of art that had the fallen horse/ rider from a different context.
At first I wondered if it was http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Images2/Misc/mode_07.jpg (http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Images2/Misc/mode_07.jpg) who'd been given the equipment of the Parthians at Firuzabad, but although there are similarities in the pose it's not close enough to be a direct copy.
Reviving this thread from the dead - Roy asked about this supposedly Sasanian plate, I queried whether it was a forgery; now I've found a paper which suggests precisely that it is a modern work - though perhaps not a "fake" as such. By Patryk Skupniewicz, who has a few articles at academia.edu about Sasanian armament.
QuoteTabriz Museum plate with the depiction of the mounted combat under discussion presents only superficial relations with Sasanian combat depictions, limited to some iconographic details which are assembled in an order unprecedented in Sasanian art. Compositionally the plate does not match any of the known Sasanian formulae. Neither the position of the combatants nor of their mounts corresponds to the known Sasanian examples. The pieces of Sasanian style are gathered in a way foreign to Sasanian aesthetics showing the knowledge of the corpus of Sasanian art but different visual language. The dynamism of the composition emphasizing the effort of the victorious personage can be related only to Kushano-Sasanian plates, but even then the crowned head is shown upright in comparison to the torso. The discrepancies between the discussed piece and the known objects of Sasanian art are too vast to believe that it could represent an unknown school of Sasanian toreutics. It is also difficult to believe that it was manufactured with an intention of forgery, i.e. selling the product under the label of originality. The forger would most likely choose a more common subject and hold to the confirmed stylistic and compositional principles. Most likely the plate was manufactured in late 1920s or 1930s in the time when Iranian national awareness received influence from the modern archaeological research. It is likely that the object was addressed to the Iranians educated in a European manner, who took pride in their past, hence exact quotations from Sasanian art and rather modern general expression.
http://izd.pskgu.ru/projects/pgu/storage/metami/metami06/metami06-11.pdf
or
https://www.academia.edu/19610407/TABRIZ_MUSEUM_BATTLE_DISH._FORMAL_CONSIDERATIONS