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LOT 1090
Luristan Bronze Horse Bit Terminal Pair
9TH-8TH CENTURY B.C.
6 in. (218 grams total, 15 cm wide including stand).
Comprising two terminals in the form of human-headed horned and winged sphinxes; mounted on a custom-made display stand.
ProvenanceFrom an old London, UK, collection.
Ex London, UK, gallery.
Cf. Moorey, P.R.S., 'The Art of Ancient Iran', in Ancient Bronzes, Ceramics and Seals, Los Angeles, 1981, items 150-3; British Museum accession no.134746, in Curtis, J.E. & Tallis, N., The Horse from Arabia to Ascot, London, 2012, p.98, cat.25, for the type.
FootnotesThe most admirable horse bits ever created by man are undoubtedly those from Luristan, a province in the north-west of Iran which extended along the valleys that make up the central part of the Zagros mountains. Worked in cast bronze with the lost wax process, they almost always had a rigid cannon in round or square bars which were flattened and rolled up around themselves at the ends, but their exceptional feature were the figural side bars. The local metalsmiths, in a period of time between 1200 and 700 B.C. managed to create an infinite number of typologies: horses, oxen, ibex, roosters and various mythological animals.
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Apart from the use of siphons or manual flame-throwers called cheirosiphona, special Roman soldiers employed terracotta grenades, in the form of small jars, abundantly evidenced in archaeological excavations. Such were the γανωτα, vessels (sometimes also in bronze) used for Greek fire. They were called μεσαία kακαβιά or κυτροκακάβια where the former had a bulbous shape and the latter a more cylindrical form.
