Details

LOT 0184

Achaemenid Silver Phiale with Central Rosette

5TH CENTURY B.C.

8 1/8 in. (283 grams, 20.7 cm wide).

Squat lotiform bowl with wide everted rim, central domed mesomphalos with rosette detailing, traces of gilding.

Provenance

English private collection, formed 1940s.
Private collection, UK.

This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by a search certificate number no.12795-241325.
This lot has been cleared against the Art Loss Register database, and is accompanied by an illustrated lot declaration signed by the Head of the Antiquities Department, Dr Raffaele D'Amato.

Literature

Cf. Mahboubian, Art of Ancient Iran: Copper and Bronze, London, 1997, no.321, p.247; cf. also similar vessel in MET, inventory no.47.100.84, in Colburn, H.P., ‘Ernst Herzfeld, Joseph Upton, and the Artaxerxes Phialai’ in Metropolitan Museum Journal 55, New York, 2020, pp.113-119, fig.1.

Footnotes

This bowl is possibly part of a set of nearly identical vessels, probably used at the table of royal Satrapes. Persian governors used banquets to display their wealth and power by imitating the royal banquets. It was a greater honour for them to receive a drinking vessel such as this as a gift from the King of the Kings – establishing one’s status as a royal dinner guest. No doubt it took practice to drink adeptly from a vessel like this: however the omphalos in the base would have made it easier to hold with one hand, with the middle finger hooked inside the indentation and the thumb stretched out to grip the vessel at or near the rim.