SCYTHIAN GOLD HANDLE

IV c. B.C.

The sheet-gold horizontal handle was once attached to the rim of wooden vessel, which has not survived. The plaque hammered over a matrix, depicting two mirror images of feline predators with their heads turned back with mouth open and fangs bared. It was hammered over a wooden mold and then wrapped around and nailed from the bottom and finally to the rim. Two rows of gold nails survived: eight from the bottom and nine along the rim. 80 x 38 x 12 mm.

Wooden vessels found in European Scythian graves dating from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in male burials and never in women’s. Most scholars have suggested ritual purposes of decorated wooden vessels, particularly that predators may be linked symbolically to the world of the dead and sacrificial offerings; or used in an orgiastic rite connected with the hallucinogenic plant Peganum harmala or mushroom Amanita muscaria in Soma/ Hauma Cult.

For a similar handle see: The Golden Deer of Eurasia. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Press, 2000, cat. 81, 158. For a similar iconography see: Piotrovsky B. Scythian Art. Phaidon, Oxford, 1987, cat. 174.