The Bronzes of Luristan(Part 1.)

Because very little is known about the circumstances under which most of the Luristan bronzes in museums and private collections were discovered, the dating of this material and the identity of the people who produced it are still subjects of lively controversy among scholars. The dates assigned to the bronzes vary from 1500 to 700 B.C.; some scholars would even include the span of the seventh century B.C. in the time during which bronzes were produced in Luristan. Among the people who were supposed to have created the bronzes are the Kassites of the sixteenth to twelfth century B.C. and the Cimmerians of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. The great differences in the dates are due in part to the fact that the bronzes are often considered to have been produced within a relatively short time. In the present book, however, an effort is made to distribute them over a longer period. [4] This approach may also help to bring the problem of the originators of the bronzes a little closer to a solution.

A few indications for classifying the groups of finds from Luristan are given by the seal types which are seen together with Luristan bronzes in dealers' shops and in collections. There were seal-rings and stamp seals of bronze, the latter often in the shape of very simplified birds; a few stamp seals were made of stone; and cylinder seals were made of stone, faience and bronze.

Two types of seal-rings are typical of Luristan; I have called them sheet-rings and lobed rings after the most salient feature of their shape. The sheet-rings are made of an engraved sheet of bronze, wider in front than at the back where the narrow ends are bent together. The lobed rings have the hoop greatly enlarged in front, forming an upper and a lower lobe which diminish in sharp curves. [p. 75] toward the back. These lobed rings were cast, and the design was subsequently engraved--often merely scratched--on the front of the ring.

The sheet-ring reproduced here shows in the centre of the design a tree with a crown composed of the pointed serrated oval forms seen in an Elamite cylinder [Fig. 32]; in the ring the tree is flanked by two bulls. The close resemblance to the Elamite design precludes a much later date for the ring. Moreover, a closely related design of a tree flanked by two confronted walking bulls is found in the design of the king's crown on a Babylonian boundary-stone dated about 1100 B.C. [5] In the Babylonian example, however, the bulls do not have the same distinctive outline of neck and horn as in the seal-ring and also in an Elamite tile, where the neck rises sharply at first and then bends, almost at a right angle, to continue in a horizontal direction to the end of the horn. The Babylonian bulls also lack the strongly arched breast and the long body on thin graceful legs of the bulls on the Elamite tile and the sheet-ring from Luristan. To these principal features one might still add a number of minor ones to prove the origin of this and related sheet rings in Iran.

No gradual transition can as yet be discerned from the sheet-rings to the lobed rings. The example chosen here shows a winged demon who stands on horned animals. His frontally rendered head and raised hands with spread fingers create an arresting impression. At the same time the rendering of the feet, placed on the hindquarters of two recumbent horned animals, lacks definition. The linear execution of the design and the slightly unbalanced posture of the demon differentiate the rendering of the lobed ring from an Elamite tile which, though fragmentary, also shows a demon standing on two adorsed animals or rather griffins. I think that the differences between the design of seal-ring and tile are not only those of medium, locality and craftsmanship, but also of style, which in [p. 76] turn would express a difference in time. The rendering of the birds' wings in the seal-ring, for example, reminds one of the skeleton of a bird, an impression which is more in keeping with the lean bull of the Elamite tile tentatively dated in the tenth to ninth century B.C. than with the fat griffin solidly lying on the ground-line in the earlier Elamite tile, here dated equally tentatively in the twelfth to eleventh century B.C.

The two-seal-rings shown here seem to represent two different phases in the art of Luristan: the first one, of the twelfth and eleventh centuries B. C., under strong Babylonian influence; the second, dated to the tenth and ninth centuries B.C., based on Elamite prototypes but showing distinctive characteristics in the expressiveness of the often very simplified and linear representations.

The cylinder seal from Luristan reproduced here also recalls earlier Elamite forms in a general way, although it is difficult to cite exact parallels. The enthroned deity with a horned mitre makes one think of an early Middle Elamite cylinder; however, the mitre in the cylinder from Luristan is differently shaped, and the deity has saber-shaped wings, to cite only the most obvious difference. The goblin squatting before the deity may have been taken over from such renderings, as seen in an Elamite cylinder; this little figure appears in several Elamite examples and was also occasionally represented by the bronze-workers of Luristan. [6]

The animal behind the throne on the cylinder from Luristan is a feline creature, to judge by its claws, perhaps intended to represent a lion, but of a supernatural variety since he has a horned mitre. The rendering of this animal in particular conveys an impression of thin, linear and pointed forms. These are criteria of style here assumed to point to a date in the tenth or ninth century B.C. The fringes on the throne of the deity, which occur in related manner on Assyrian cylinder seals approximately dated in the ninth century B.C. and probably earlier, [7] tend to confirm this date.

The date of the cylinder seal thus appears to correspond with that of the lobed rings, although the style of the latter differs from the cylinders in that it does not represent a well-defined stylistic group in which one or more artists had worked out certain conventions, such as the rendering of the claws or the mitres that are found on more than one cylinder seal. The bronze rings, on the contrary, differ from each other and seem to have been scratched almost accidentally and singly rather than by practiced craftsmen. Yet renderings like the demon of Figure 48 are important because they reflect, however crudely, the themes current at that time in Luristan.

A square plaque, probably an amulet rather than a seal-stone, belonging to a [p. 78] distinctive type said to have been found in Luristan, shows on one side a gazelle, on the other a crouching lion whose claws might be called simplified versions of those of the feline monster in Figure 49. The lion of the plaque, however, has more rounded forms than the figures in the cylinder. This is in part due to the drill which was employed to make the major hollows for the animal bodies in the plaque and also for the details in the head, as well as for rings, each with a dot in the centre, which fill the field. The use of the drill, which can also be noted in Assyria and Babylonia on cylinder and stamp seals from the ninth to the sixth century B.C., suggests that taste turned to rounded, fuller forms than those common in Luristan at the slightly earlier time to which I assigned the cylinder [Figure 49]. Moreover, the lion of the plaque with its strongly arched and powerful neck seems to prefigure representations of lions made in the Achaemenid period. [8] [p. 79]

In addition to the seals here discussed, which seem to be typical of Luristan and have not been found elsewhere, other seal types also occur in this area. Some are faience cylinders engraved with human figures, often shown with a tree in a very simplified globular style referred to as Mitannian or Hurrian. The style can be dated in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. because so many seal impressions of this style were found on tablets at Nuzi in northern Mesopotamia and at Ashur. Cylinders of this type obviously could be manufactured in large numbers and therefore probably sold cheaply. Moreover, they may have been sought after because of the prestige enjoyed by the Mitannian empire at that time. [9] The same situation prevailed with respect to the Assyrian faience cylinders of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. Again the prestige of a great power, this time Assyria, could have been coupled with the relative cheapness of such cylinders to cause their wide distribution.

These two groups of cylinders may mark the periods of most active exchange between Luristan and northern Mesopotamia. The fact that the majority of the bronzes of Luristan do not show Assyrian influence may indicate that they were made when there was less communication between the two regions.

At first the many types and styles among the Luristan bronzes confuse the viewer. Only gradually can one succeed in assembling distinctive classes of objects and in postulating stylistic connections and sequences. A large number of the bronzes are cast. They comprise weapons such as axes, daggers and the so-called halberds, which were named for their superficial resemblance to medieval halberds; there were also picks and mace-heads. The bronze jewelry [p. 80] includes rings for all the joints of the human body from finger-rings to anklets. There were also pins with all sorts of heads, shaped like animals, birds or plants, and there were pendants of various types. Another large group of Luristan bronzes consist of parts of horses' gear, of which only the bits and cheek-pieces can easily be identified, whereas the use of other objects remains unknown. The best-known Luristan bronzes are the so-called standards, consisting of a pair of ibexes or a pair of feline animals, panthers or lions, or of a demonic figure with support and held in place by a thin tube or a pin.