An iron dagger with a tapering double-edged blade with a raised three-row median ridge, the wide and flat hilt with bronze cap and lower guard, the handle with nine pierced concentric circles in two rows on bronze; accompanied by a bronze chape with paddle-shaped foot. 2 3/4 - 13 1/2 in. (207 grams total, 7-34.5 cm long). Fine condition. [2]

PROVENANCE:
Private collection of Mr M.B., Mainz, Germany, 1990s.
Property of a London businessman.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD certificate no.11202-186233.

LITERATURE:
Cf. Gorelik, M., Weapons of Ancient East, IV millennium BC-IV century BC, Saint Petersburg, 2003 (in Russian), see pl.VIII, nos.7 and 10, for similar daggers from the burial ground in Kislovodsk.

FOOTNOTES:
The Cimmerian dagger, of type Kabardino-Pjatigorsk, belongs geographically to the Northern Black Sea area. These weapons are considered by scholars like Gorelik, as daggers of North-Caucasus 'Cimmerian' type of the North Caucasus, usually with iron blades and bronze hilts and chape, and the characteristic of having one of the ends of the cross-guard with holes for hanging. These blades with triangular cross-guards, widely spread in the second half of the 8th - the first half of the 7th century B.C., developed according to Gorelik and other scholars, in the cross-guards of the Scythian-Iranian bladed weapons.