Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
A stylized humanoid or simian figure sits atop a rod from around which project six tack-shaped knobs with flattened heads, forming four columns of six knobs each. The rod continues through a flattened circular element and ends in a large flattened tip with a convex exterior surface. The humanoid figure is hollow but has two short legs resting on the edge of a circular base. There are triangular spaces between the legs and the body. Two rod-shaped arms rise from the knees to meet a projecting rectangular tab that joins to a larger trapezoidal head at its top. The back of the figure is decorated with groups of four incised lines wrapping horizontally around the waist. Below it are two groups of similar incised lines that taper inward toward the bottom of the figure. Finally, two similar groups of identical incised lines mark the shoulders, tapering inward toward the base of the head.
This class of object is common among Macedonian assemblages of bronze ornaments from the eighth to seventh centuries BCE. Formerly termed “bottle-stoppers” (Kannenverschlüsse) by U. Jantzen, who thought the tack-shaped knobs would have been wrapped with cord or string and used to seal bottles containing liquids (1). They are now recognized to be pendants that hung from elaborate belts in sets, as M. Vickers has conclusively shown (2). These objects fall into two classes, an earlier one in which the seated simian figure is solid cast in the round (3), and a later abstract group, in which the seated figure is reduced to a thin plate and strip-like elements. Single seated figures with their hands held to their head are well known from central and southern Greece, such as a seated figure in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (4). That figure holds an oval object to its face, but it is unclear whether this object is a piece of fruit or a musical instrument. A smaller figure on a circular base, formerly in the Leon Pomerance collection and now in a private collection in Beverly Hills, California, holds a cylindrical object projecting from the head that is most likely a musical instrument (5). This entire class of seated figures has Egyptian and Levantine predecessors, as P. Kranz and S. Langdon have demonstrated (6). The significance of these seated figures for Iron Age Greeks and Macedonians, however, remains unknown. As a class, they date from the eighth to the early seventh centuries BCE (7).
NOTES:
1. Id., “Geometrische Kannenverschlüsse,” Archäologischer Anzeiger (1953): 56-67
2. M. Vickers, “Some Early Iron Age Bronzes from Macedonia,” in Ancient Macedonia 2: Papers Read at the Second International Symposium Held in Thessaloniki, 17-24 August 1973, Institute for Balkan Studies 155 (Thessaloniki, 1977) 17-31.
3. Such as in 1981.40; see also I. Kilian-Dirlmeier, Anhänger in Griechenland von der mykenischen bis zur spätgeometrischen Zeit, Prähistorische Bronzefunde 11.2 (Munich, 1979) 196, no. 1182, pl. 63.
4. S. Langdon, ed., From Pasture to Polis: Art in the Age of Homer, exh. cat., Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia; University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley; Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Columbia, MO, 1993) 206-208, no. 80.
5. Ibid., 153-54, no. 54.
6. P. Kranz, “Frühe griechische Sitzfiguren: Zum Problem der Typenbildung und des orientalischen Einflusses in der frühen griechischen Rundplastik,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 87 (1972): 1-55; and S. Langdon, “From Monkey to Man: The Evolution of a Geometric Sculptural Type,” American Journal of Archaeology 94 (1990): 407-24.
7. See also Kilian-Dirlmeier 1979 (supra 3) 197-203, nos. 1198-289, pls. 64-72; ead., Kleinfunde aus dem Athena Itonia-Heiligtum bei Philia (Thessalien) (Mainz, 2002) 42 nn. 175-78, nos. 580-82, pl. 40; and K. Kilian, Fibeln in Thessalien von der mykenischen bis zur archaischen Zeit, Prähistorische Bronzefunde 14.2 (Munich, 1975) 211, nos. 28-31, pl. 87.
David G. Mitten
