Two Luristan Bronze Blades - Petaloid Daggers with Tangs

Near East, Persia, Luristan culture. A pair of cast bronze blades from the mountainous valleys of western Persia each drawn to a slender leaf-shaped, or petaloid, body tapering to a fine point. The larger of the two retains an earthen crust of reddish sediment across its length, its central spine still discernible beneath the accretion. The smaller blade wears a mottled green patina and preserves a flat tang pierced with rivet perforations near the base, where the handle of wood, bone, or bronze was once secured. Weapons and tools of this type were forged in prodigious quantity by the Luristan bronzeworkers, a semi-nomadic pastoral people renowned across the ancient Near East for their metallurgy. Whether wielded in the hunt, in warfare, or deposited as votive offerings, such blades speak to a martial culture whose artistry in bronze remains unrivaled among the highland peoples of the Iron Age. The Luristan bronzes derive their name from the Lorestan province of the Zagros Mountains in western Persia, where thousands were recovered from graves and hoards beginning in the late 1920s. Produced largely between the twelfth and seventh centuries BCE, they encompass horse trappings, standards, pins, vessels, and an abundance of weaponry. The pastoral and horse-breeding peoples who made them left scant written record, so the objects themselves, cast by the lost-wax method and often finished by cold-hammering, remain the primary testimony of their world. Item # 203815

Estimate:£225.43

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