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MAIASP. 2023. No. 15 Mikhail Treister
( The vessels of the “ DOI: 10.53737/7020.2023.61.96.007 Access this article (PDF File) Pages: 198—335 |
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Among
the finds of silver vessels from the nomadic burials of the Lower Don and
Lower Volga regions of the Middle Sarmatian period, a group of vessels of
different shapes stands out, which are united by the decoration technique. The
images are made in a planar manner, the contours are
executed by long incised lines. Images,
as well as ornamental friezes are gilded. At
the turn of the 1980s — 1990s, when I was preparing
the publication of vessels from Kosika, it was
obvious to me that this group of vessels is a unique collection, which,
according to a number of features, could have been made in a nomadic
environment especially for their nobility. According
to the inscription on the basin, which mentioned a certain Ampsalakos, who made it, I conditionally designated this
group of vessels as the works of the “Ampsalakos
school”, later on making certain adjustments to the chronology of the work of
this workshop, but without refusing to single it out. In none of the works published in recent decades, in
which the vessels from Kosika are attributed to the
products of the Parthian workshops, there is not a single parallel with the
Parthian silver vessels (!). Either the authors are not aware of these, or they do
not consider it necessary to substantiate their attributions. On the
other hand, the desire to attribute these vessels as Parthian products is
quite in line with the trend, if not to deny the possibility of the existence
of artisans-toreuts and their workshops in the
nomadic societies, including the Sarmatians, then
to cast it into serious doubt. The researchers who take such positions demonstrate
ignorance of the widely known facts about the development of crafts, including
metalworking, in the nomadic societies of This
work is an attempt to update, taking into account new finds, publications and
attributions that have appeared in the last almost thirty years after the
publication of my article in 1994. How
can the appearance of the vessels under discussion be reconstructed? There
is no reason to consider them all as imported. Noteworthy is the combination
of ornamental motifs characteristic of the toreutics
of the Seleucid-Parthian circle. At
the same time, such important components as the composition of the
decoration, the size and correlation of individual elements of the rosettes,
the primitive execution of ornamental motifs, in particular on the frieze
with shoots of floral ornament or on the rosettes, allow us to say that the
craftsman who made these vessels (Kosika, Verbovskiy), was, of course, familiar with the works of toreutics of the Middle East, Western and Central Asia,
but did not see their prototypes and did not understand the meaning and role of
the elements and composition of the decoration, belonging to a different
culture. However, this does not
automatically mean that the vessels in question necessarily came from the
workshops of Against the general background, a jug from Vysochino stands out, in which the level of decoration is
higher, and the repertoire of images is much more diverse, many of which are
characteristic of the Seleucid-Parthian toreutics. However,
even here the images are made inaccurately, the lines are often duplicated,
the figures go beyond the friezes, and from all the
rich technical repertory of the Middle and Near Eastern toreutics,
the master preferred the cutter. Statics and primitivism are especially striking in the
depictions of human figures in the fishing scenes. One way or another, the jug from Vysochino, which was altered with the addition of a
zoomorphic handle (like imported luterion
from Novoaleksandrovka), for the nomads of the
Lower Don was, of course, an imported item. At the
same time, the shape of this jug, which has no prototypes in Western or On the whole, the jug from Vysochino
can be regarded as an intermediate link between the works of toreutics made in the workshops of the Middle East or The above-mentioned features of the images on the
vessels from Kosika give grounds for both
chronological conclusions and assumptions about the origin of the craftsmen. As for
dating, the entire range of parallels indicates that the assignment of
vessels to the 1st century BCE is quite justified. There are certain differences in the rendering of
similar images and their details on the vessels from Kosika,
Verbovskiy, and the collection of S.I. Grigoryants and the level of skill allows us to assume the work of
different craftsmen. Against the general background, a
certain negligence in the rendering of details on the goblet from Verbovskiy is striking. This makes it possible to assume not only the
manufacture of the vessels under discussion by different craftsmen, but also
at various times in
frames of the mid-1st century BCE —first half of the 1st
century CE. This reconstruction, based only on the analysis of the forms of vessels, subjects,
decorative motifs, forms and techniques of execution of decorative elements
without taking into account historical reconstructions, nevertheless, is in
perfect agreement with the reconstruction that I originally carried out and,
of course, under the influence of reading and interpretation of
the inscription on the basin from Kosika. |
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Key words: Asian Sarmatia,
Lower Volga, Lower Don regions, interfluve of Don
and |
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Received March 7, 2023. Accepted for publication March
22, 2023. |
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About the author: Treister Mikhail ( E-mail: mikhailtreister@yahoo.de |