The cultural interactions between India and West Asia were long-lasting. Startling visual parallels between Mauryan and Persian imperial palace architecture appear with little evidence of how such imagery traveled across continents. One clue is this rare gold Achaemenid rhyton, a horn-shaped drinking vessel. Highly portable, objects of this type served as diplomatic gifts or were part of the luxury trade between the empires. The circulation of such objects in India could have provided models for the lion capital exhibited nearby. Imperial objects were at once valuable and highly vulnerable. Nothing from the Mauryan treasury survives in India.
#7017. Vessel Terminating in the Forepart of a Fantastic Leonine Creature
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7017. Vessel Terminating in the Forepart of a Fantastic Leonine Creature
885. Kids: Vessel Terminating in the Forepart of a Fantastic Leonine Creature
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Title:Vessel terminating in the forepart of a fantastic leonine creature
Period:Achaemenid
Date:ca. 5th century BCE
Geography:Iran
Culture:Achaemenid
Medium:Gold
Dimensions:6 11/16 × 5 7/16 × 3 5/8 in., 2.1 lb. (17 × 13.8 × 9.2 cm, 1 kg)
Credit Line:Fletcher Fund, 1954
Accession Number:54.3.3
Ex-collection of Khalil Rabenou, New York; by 1953, Kevorkian collection; acquired by the Museum in 1954, purchased from The Kevorkian Foundation, New York.
“Assyrian and Persian Art,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 25, 1955–January 22, 1956.
“In the Presence of Kings: Royal Treasures from the Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 19–September 4, 1967.
“Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 14, 1970–June 1, 1971.
“Gold,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 14–September 9, 1973.
“Best of Fifty,” The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, March 24–May 8, 1977.
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Selections from the Collection of the Ancient Near East Department,” MOA Museum of Art, Atami, Japan, The Aiche Prefectural Art Gallery, Nagoya, Japan, The Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, 1983.
“Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings.” Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, September 7, 2018–January 6, 2019.
"Epic Iran." The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, May 29, 2021–September 12, 2021.
"Additions to the Collections." Eighty-Fourth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Year 1953, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13 (1) (Summer 1954), p. 17.
"Assyrian and Persian Gold and Silver: Masterpieces from Recent Dicoveries, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York." Illustrated London News, April 16, 1955, p. 699.
Wilkinson, Charles K. 1955. "Assyrian and Persian Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 13 (7), pp. 221-223.
"New Treasures of Teheran Museum: Achaemenian Gold and Later Silver." Illustrated London News, July 21, 1956, p. 107.
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Amandry, Pierre. 1959. "Les douze plus belles découvertes des dix dernières années." Connaissance des Arts 94, p. 156, no. VII.
Hoffman, Herbert. 1961. "The Persian Origins of Attic Rhyta." Antike Kunst 4 (1), p. 25, n. 49.
Porada, Edith. 1962. Alt-Iran. Baden-Baden: Holle, p. 163.
Glubock, Shirley. 1963. The Art of Lands in the Bible. New York: Atheneum, p. 19.
Ghirshman, Roman. 1964. The Arts of Ancient Iran. New York: Golden Press, p. 253, fig. 306.
Young, William J. 1965. "Sumptuary Arts of Ancient Persia." Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 63 (331), no. 17, pp. 28-29.
Porada, Edith. 1965. The Art of Ancient Iran. New York: Crown Publishers, p. 165, pl. 47.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1967. In the Presence of Kings: Royal Treasures from the Collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, exh. cat. New York, no. 5.
Wilkinson, Charles K. 1967. "Vessels from Ziwiye Terminating in Animal Heads." In A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, vol. 14, edited by Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman. Shiraz: Asia Institute of Pahlavi University, p. 2979, pl. 1493.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1970. Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries, exh. cat. New York: Dutton, no. 61, p. 113.
Hoving, Thomas, and Carmen Gómez-Moreno. 1972-1973. "Gold." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 31 (2), Winter 1972/1973, pp. 76-77.
Starr, Chester G. 1973. Early Man: Prehistory and the Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 172.
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Thomsen, E.G. and H.H. Thomsen. 1976. "An analysis of wire making in antiquity." In Proceedings of the Fourth North American Metalworking Research Conference, edited by Taylan Altan, Columbus: Battelle's Columbus Laboratories, p. 140, fig. 1.
Taft Museum. 1977. Best of Fifty, exh. cat. Cincinnati: Taft Museum, pp. 30-31.
Liebling, Roslyn. 1978. Time Line of Culture in the Nile Valley and its Relationship to Other World Cultures. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Muscarella, Oscar W. 1980. "Excavated and Unexcavated Achaemenid Art." In Ancient Persia: The Art of an Empire (Invited Lectures on the Middle East at the Unviersity of Texas at Austin, Vol. 4), edited by Denise Schmandt-Besserat. Malibu: Undena Publications, p. 33, fig. 14.
Hibbard, Howard. 1980. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harper and Row, fig. 116, p. 63.
Amiet, Pierre. 1981. "The Middle East." In Art in the Ancient World: A Handbook of Styles and Forms. New York: Rizzoli, no. 201, p. 64.
Muscarella, Oscar W. 1983. "Drinking Vessel Terminating in the Forepart of a Lion." In The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Selections from the Collection of the Ancient Near East Department, exh. cat. Tokyo: Chunichi Shimbun, no. 83.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1983. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide, edited by Kathleen Howard. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 48, fig. 7.
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Meyers, Pieter. 1988. "The Structure of Works of Art and Historic Artifacts." Material Research Society Proceedings, Vol. 123, 5, p. 13, figs. 8-10.
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Litvinsky, B. A. and I. R. Pichikyan. 1994. "A Rhyton from Takhti Sangin." Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 1 (3), p. 362.
Manassero, Nicolò. 2008. Rhyta e corni potori dall’Età del Ferro all’epoca sasanide: libagioni pure e misticismo tra la Grecia e il mondo iranico. BAR International Series 1750. Oxford: John and Erica Hedges Ltd., pp. 56, 85, no. 3.31.
Benzel, Kim, Sarah B. Graff, Yelena Rakic, and Edith W. Watts. 2010. Art of the Ancient Near East: A Resource for Educators. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, image 25, pp. 100-101.
Bahrani, Zainab. 2017. Art of Mesopotamia. London and New York: Thames and Hudson, p. 318, fig. 13.28.
Ebbinghaus, Susanne, with Henry P. Colburn. 2018. "Emblematic Animals at Iron Age Feasts." In Animal-Shaped Vessels in the Ancient World: Drinking with Gods, Heroes, and Kings, edited by Susanne Ebbinghaus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, no. 16, pp. 113-14, fig. 3.24.
Curtis, John, Ina Sarikhani Sandmann and Tim Stanley. 2021. Epic Iran: 5000 Years of Culture. London: V&A Publishing, pp. 78-79, no. 65.
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Includes more than 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the time of the Arab conquests of the seventh century A.D.
