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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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