Luristan Bronze Miniature Mace Head | Hollow Globular Form, Ancient Persia

Ancient Near East, Persia, Luristan. A miniature globular mace head cast in bronze, its spherical body rising from a short collared neck and pierced by a central shaft hole. The interior is hollowed, so at this small scale the head carries very little mass: a solid casting of the same diameter would strike with far greater force, and the lightened form suggests procession, presentation, or display rather than combat. A fine incised lip encircles the lower edge of the neck, a refinement that would have steadied the binding where haft met head. Dense mottled green and earthen cuprite corrosion sheathes the surface, granular across the shoulders and pooling darker in the hollows. The mace ranks among the oldest emblems of authority in the region, and an example lightened in this way belongs squarely to that symbolic register. By the first millennium BCE the mace had long outlived its usefulness on the battlefield, displaced by the axe and the sword, yet it endured as one of the most legible signs of sovereignty in the ancient Near East. Assyrian palace reliefs place it in the hands of kings and attendant officials; Mesopotamian temple inventories record maces dedicated to deities, and the weapon appears as a divine attribute in cylinder-seal iconography. The bronzeworkers of the Luristan valleys, prolific casters of horse gear, finials, and votive weaponry, produced hollow and lightweight heads of exactly this kind, objects whose authority derived from what they signified rather than from what they could break. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 204540

Estimate:£149.5

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