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The
publication is dedicated to a bronze vessel found in a robbed burial
of the second half of the 4th century BCE in
the Burial-mound no. 1 of the Chastye Kurgany group on the outskirts of Voronezh, excavated by the
Voronezh Scientific Archive Commission in 1910. A vessel with a
handle attachment in form of a mask under the edge on the outside and a gorgoneion-medallion at the bottom inside is a patera with a handle lost in antiquity. Such
pateras with similarly shaped edges of the bowl and
handles ending in a ram's head are known after a
very small number of finds of the second half of the 4th century
BCE almost all of which come from Macedonia and Thrace. Given the
fact that lion's paws are depicted on the sides of
the neck of the person shown on the mask, there is every reason for its
attribution as the head of Herakles. A
similar iconography is typical for vessel attachments from Northern
Greece. The treatment of hair strands, in
particular symmetrical curls over the forehead (anastole
/ ἀναστολή),
resembles the hairstyle in the portraits of
Alexander the Great and imitations of them. Taking into account this observation, it is hardly possible to date the patera
from Chastye kurgans earlier than the last quarter
of the 4th century BCE. In
the North Pontic
region, bronze vessels of this shape have not yet been
known, despite the fact that the finds of bronze vessels of the
Macedonian-Thracian circle of the 4th century BCE are
represented both in Scythia and in the Bosporus. Taking into
account the known finds of bronze vessels of the Macedonian
types at the Elizavetinskoe fortified settlement
and in its necropolis at the mouth of the Don, it can be
assumed that such vessels could have reached the Middle Don in this
way. At the same time, given the
relative rarity of bronze (silver) pateras in Macedonia and Thrace in the second half of the
4th — early 3rd century BCE and
their finds in very rich complexes, including in the royal burials in Vergina and Golyamata Kosmatka, one cannot exclude the possibility of a
different way for the patera from Chastye Barrows. In Macedonia and Thrace, such pateras,
together with the oinochoai, were part of the
banquet sets, therefore, in this case, the patera,
which, perhaps, originally had a pair (oinochoe) could also be a diplomatic gift. In
any case, the patera from Chastye
Burial-mounds fits into the circle of finds of Thracian horse-bridle pieces
and Thracian and Macedonian toreutics found in the burials
of the Scythian nobility in the Middle Don region.
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Key words: Scythian
Burial-mounds, Middle Don region, Macedonian and Thracian bronze vessels, pateras, Herakles, Gorgo, Alexander of Macedon, iconography.
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