Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This diminutive stag stands erect with its head thrust upward and antlers tilting back. The head and antlers are schematized, the muzzle having a diamond-shaped cross-section and the antlers forming a squared, four-pronged array; the tail is a simple triangular protrusion. A small suspension loop emerges from its back where the neck meets the shoulders. The slender legs are held tightly together on a small, irregularly shaped flat base. Two small and two larger round holes are punched in the center of the base, possibly for attachment to a larger item.
In the late second and early first millennia BCE, representations of stags in bronze and ceramic were popular throughout the mountainous regions of the Near East, stretching from northwestern Iran through northern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and into Thrace (1). These figurines display a wide range of styles and quality. Many of them bear suspension loops on their back, or, in the case of two stags from Marlik in Iran, are pierced through the front shoulders. The shape and tilt of the head show connections to Hittite and earlier central Anatolian art (2).
NOTES:
1. For Iran, see the bronze stag from Kaluraz (seventh century BCE) in Archaeologia Viva 1 (September/November 1968) no. 106; and four bronze stags from Marlik (c. 1000 BCE) in E. O. Negahban, Preliminary Report on Marlik Excavation, 1961-1962 (Tehran, 1964) fig. 96. For Thrace, see the bronze stag from Orjahovo (eighth-seventh century BCE) in Gold of the Thracian Horsemen: Treasures from Bulgaria, exh. cat., Palais de la civilization, Montreal (Montreal, 1987) no. 170. Unprovenienced examples were also previously in the Norbert Schimmel collection (attributed to southwest Caspian region of Iran in the late second millennium BCE); see H. Hoffmann, ed., The Beauty of Ancient Art: Classical Antiquity, Near East, Egypt. Exhibition of the Norbert Schimmel Collection, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (Mainz, 1964) nos. 69-70. Other unprovenienced examples were formerly in the collection of Leo Mildenberg (attributed to Anatolia or Syria, c. 1000 BCE); see A. P. Kozloff, D. G. Mitten, and M. Sguaitamatti, More Animals in Ancient Art from the Leo Mildenberg Collection (Mainz, 1986) no. II, 21.
2. For third millennium Alaca Höyük standards, see E. Akurgal, The Art of the Hittites (New York, 1962) pl. 2.1-6. For a Hittite silver stag rhyton in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, see P. F. Dorman, P. O. Harper, and H. Pittman, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Egypt and the Ancient Near East (New York, 1987) 120-21.
Marian Feldman
