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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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Anglo-Saxon Iron Socketted Arrowhead
Circa 6th-8th century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £72
Comprising a triangular leaf-shaped blade with tapering socket. 10 grams, 87 mm
Found Cambridgeshire, UK. -
Ottoman Inscribed Pattern-Welded Yatagan Sabre
c.1800 A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £585
With a pattern-welded 'damascened' single-edged T-section blade with swept profile, guard with quadrant profile with rosettes, antler grip with projecting ears; silver-inlaid name panel to one face, with silver-inlaid arabesque panel to the other; blade inscribed with the Arabic year '1172'; silver maker's mark and inscription either side of the blade. 650 grams, 79.5 cm
Very fine condition. Rare.
Acquired in the 1970s. Ex collection of a London gentleman.
The yatagan is a long knife or short sabre that lacks a guard for the hand at the juncture of blade and hilt, and that usually has a double-curve to the edge and an almost straight back. It was one of the favoured side-arms of the Janissary infantry regiments. Yatagans were carried by the Zeibeks, who lived on the Ionian coast, around Smyrna. -
Roman Iron Gladius
1st-2nd century A.D.Sold for (Inc. bp): £1,300
Or semi-spatha blade with parallel-sided lentoid-section body and a long rectangular-section tang; Mainz type, Wederath-Canterbury-Kopki variant; repaired and surface treated. 557 grams, 83 cm
Ex South London collection, acquired 1970-1990. The Kusmirek Collection, UK. Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D'Amato.
In contrast to the average length of the Roman Pompeii type gladius, some Roman swords, continuing the typology of the Mainz gladius, tend to be longer and transform themselves into a semi-spatha. Both the weapon from Eich (Miks, 2001, AI43), and especially a gladius from Korytnica with approximate blade length of 548mm (total length 762mm) is very close to the length limit of a semi-spatha. The same can be said of a blade from Godmanchester (Miks, 2001, no.A824) for its dimensions and proportions, where the tip of the blade already gives a significantly shorter impression, showing a certain relationship to 'Lauriacum-Hrornöwka', 'Mainz-Canterbury' variant type spathae.
