Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This silhouette pendant in the form of a stylized bird with a large crest and prominent curving tail was cast in a two-piece mold. It is decorated with punched circles with central points. There is one at the base of the suspension loop on both sides, three on the crest, and four on the tail. Two short legs with rounded tips diverge from the body under the central loop. The pointed head projects straight downward from the rounded crest. The tail curves upward and ends in a curving tip. Both head and tail were made approximately the same size so that the pendant would balance when suspended. This type of silhouette bird pendant is known from other examples in northern Greece and the southern Balkans (1). The prominent crest and tail mark this bird as a stylized fowl, of the kind often termed “peacocks.” Three-dimensional examples of such large, fantastical bird pendants are well known from Perachora and Delphi (2). A third example, formerly in the Norbert Schimmel collection and now in a private collection in California, has lost the tip of its arching tail (3). The date is probably in the eighth century BCE.
NOTES:
1. Compare J. Bouzek, Graeco-Macedonian Bronzes (Prague, 1974) 90, fig. 27.5; and I. Kilian-Dirlmeier, Anhänger in Griechenland von der mykenischen bis zur spätgeometrischen Zeit, Prähistorische Bronzefunde 11.2 (Munich, 1979) 136-38, nos. 745-57, pls. 40-41.
2. For the bird from Perachora, see H. Payne, Perachora 1 (Oxford, 1947) 125-26, no. 3, pl. 37. For the bird from Delphi, which can rest on its two feet as well as be suspended, see C. Rolley, Monuments figurés: Les statuettes de bronze, Fouilles de Delphes 5 (Paris, 1969) 86-90, no. 146, pl. 25.
3. O. W. Muscarella, ed., The Norbert Schimmel Collection (Mainz, 1974) no. 10.
David G. Mitten
