Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This imperfectly round, flat mirror has a short, rectangular tang. The tang would have been inserted into a handle of wood or bone that is no longer preserved. A number of similar mirrors were excavated at Cemetery B of Tepe Sialk in northwest Iran, a context that is dated from the tenth to ninth centuries BCE (1). These mirrors were discovered near the hands of the skeletons, sometimes in a position that could have caught the reflection of the face.
In northwest Iran, examples of similar mirrors, but with pierced tangs, have been excavated from tombs dated from the late second to early first millennia BCE at Marlik and at the necropolis of Khūrvīn (2). It appears that tanged-disc mirrors were popular for several centuries, as remarkably consistent examples were found at Deve Hüyük II, a cemetery site in south-central Turkey, dated to approximately the fifth century BCE. These burials are believed to contain the remains of Achaemenid soldiers and what may be local women.
NOTES:
1. See R. Ghirshman, Fouilles de Sialk près de Kashan, 1933, 1934, 1937 (Paris, 1939) 2: 59, 220, 230, 239-40, and 243, pls. 29, 52, 67, 69, 72-73, and 89.
2. See E. O. Negahban, Marlik: The Complete Excavation Report, University Museum Monograph 87 (Philadelphia, 1996) 311, no. 971, pl. 139; and L. Vanden Berghe, La nécropole de Khūrvīn (Istanbul, 1964) 36-38 and 70, no. 350, pl. 47.
3. See P. R. S. Moorey, Cemeteries of the First Millennium B.C. at Deve Hüyük, BAR Int. Ser. 87 (Oxford, 1980) 94, nos. 385-88, fig. 15.
Amy Gansell
