LUR099 - FINEST EXCEPTIONALLY LARGE ANCIENT BRONZE LURISTAN RAT TAIL SPEARHEAD WITH PROMINENT WILLOW LEAF SPEAR DESIGN

Product Description

ID

Spearhead

FOUND

Ancient Near East

AGE

BRONZE AGE:
  4000 - 3500 years ago

SIZE

14.75" long

CONDITION

INTACT AND COMPLETE WITH
FULL RAT-TAIL LONG TANG.
NO REPAIR / NO RESTORATION.  
STABILIZED AND SEALED.

NOTE

FINEST, LARGE EXAMPLE WITH
SUPERB PATINA.

Comes with a certificate of
authenticity / information sheet

This is a supreme bronze "Rat Tail" spearhead of an Ancient Near Eastern Bronze Age.  With its unusually long tang and bend on the end, the term Rat Tail has been adopted as layman term based on its resemblance.  This would have been a primary spear for ancient warriors.  The long tang embedded in a wooden pole and kept from pulling out by being lashed around the shaft and terminated on the bent process to keep it in place.

These spears are as beautiful as functional, when found in the stunning willow leaf form as this example is.  Superb and complete with a prominent mid-rib to strengthen the blade, as it would have been intended to go against semi-hard targets such as enemies with soft armor. 

In keeping with proper museum ancient bronze conservation techniques, this specimen has been professionally cleaned and conserved in our lab to stabilize the patina and prevent deterioration or bronze disease.  Metal artifacts that are not treated and properly conserved may corrode over time and even disintegrate into pieces.  The patina shows beautiful traits only found in authentic ancient weapons.  It is a patina like this that the finest ancient bronzes are prized for and it is a patina like this that brings a premium in price and value of the specimen.  NO REPAIR OR RESTORATION. 

WARNING:  There is an increasing number of fake Near Eastern (Luristan) bronze weapons on the market.  As fine quality intact, original specimens become more scarce and techniques have become more sophisticated to fake these weapons.  We have personally handled numerous extremely well-done fakes with extremely convincing patinas.  The degree to which the fakers have been able to replicate patina to disguise their work requires an expert examination by highly experienced individuals.  It is common to find very reasonably priced weapons that are made up of part original and part modern components or wholly modern pieces displaying elaborate artificial patinas.  All purchases should include from the dealer a written guarantee of authenticity with unconditional and lifetime return policies regarding such guarantee. 

With origins dating back to prehistory, the empire of ancient Iran was one of the world's first superpower civilizations by the time it had taken form in the second millennium B.C..  The various cultures that can be included in the former ancient Iranian Empire stretched across an enormous geographical region extending beyond what is called the Iranian Plateau.  To gain insight as to just how large this area was, the Iranian Plateau alone, includes Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and comprises approximately nearly 4 million square kilometers (almost 1.5 million square miles).  The area of ancient Iran included not only the massive Iranian plateau made up of the tribes of the Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians, but also included groups as far west as the Scythians (an eastern Scythian tribe existed in parallel in Central Asia), Sarmartians, Cimmerians and Alans populating the steppes north of the Black Sea.  To the eastern boundary of the empire, the Saka tribes dominated, spreading as far as Xinjiang, China.  From a very early period, the ancient Iranian peoples have been historically documented to exist in two separate continuums - a western civilization (Persia) and an eastern civilization (Scythia).

The beginnings of ancient Iran trace back to an influx into the Iranian cultural region of bands of horse-mounted steppe nomads from Central Asia, speaking Indo-European languages.  Some settled in eastern Iran but other groups migrated deeper to the west settling in the Zagros Mountains.  These first people descended from the proto-Iranians, originating from the Central Asian Bronze age culture of what is called the Bactria-Margiana Complex (aka Oxus Civilization), dated 2200-1700 B.C..

This historical achievements  and the breadth of diverse cultures included of this once great empire are too vast to adequately credit in this brief synopsis.  The Islamic conquest of Persia in the middle of the 7th century A.D. and the collapse of the Sassanid Empire marked the end of once geographically expansive and culturally diverse ancient superpower.

The term LURISTAN references artifacts made by a society of semi-nomadic people that once lived in the mountainous region of Northwest Iran.  Little is known of this ancient culture but the most impressive traces are that of the bronze artifacts they left behind that can be found in parts of present-day Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan.  These include highly decorative equipment for their horses, ceremonial containers and numerous weapons ranging from simple utilitarian pieces on up to elaborate masterpieces of warfare. 

It is theorized that the Luristan bronzes were crafted by the earliest existence of the Median empire but this has never been proven as written records of the Medes have not survived.  The Medes were Indo-Iranian people originally from central Asia who settled in Northwest Iran in the 9th century BC and later defeated the Assyrian empire in 614 BC.  Their success is short-lived and their empire which once stretched from central Iran to the Persian Gulf and Anatolia was overrun in 550 BC by the Persians.