LOT 0274

South Arabian Bronze Bowl Featuring a Hunting Scene and Inscription

SOUTHWESTERN ARABIA, KINGDOM OF MA’IN, CIRCA 3RD CENTURY B.C.-2ND CENTURY A.D.

6 1/8 in. (277 grams, 15.5 cm).

Broad and squat with impressed guilloche below the inner rim, repoussé frieze with fleeing ibex attacked by a gryphon and kneeling archer to the rear; central rosette; seven incised characters to inner face and four to outer face.

Saleh family collection, Germany, formed prior to 1972.
Private collection, UK.

This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by search certificate no.12809-241324.

Cf. Overlaet, B. & Yule, P., A late pre-Islamic bowl with Levantine-inspired decoration from ed-Dur (UAE) in Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, vol.29, no.2, 2018, especially figs.2-3,7.

The presence of decorated bronze bowls during the later Pre-Islamic period, mainly in the territories of the modern Emirates, is well documented. Many decorated bowls and bowl fragments were discovered at Mleiha; one or more possible fragments were found at ed-Dur, and a single bowl comes from a Pre-Islamic period C tomb in Dibba. They are also similar to the so-called Phoenician - or, more correctly, Levantine - bowls produced in the 9th-early 7th century B.C. They combine local Levantine elements with imagery borrowed from Mesopotamia and Egypt, and local Arabian themes, such as camel and horse riding, often composed in radial zones.