RARE GILDED ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN LURISTAN BRONZE BOWL *LUR190

Product Description

SEE MORE ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ANTIQUITIES

This is a RARE authentic ancient Near Eastern gilded bronze bowl.  It is in exceptional condition considering it is thousands of years old and made from thin, hammered bronze.  Other than some small age cracks, the bowl is in excellent preservation with intact internal gilding still visible.  A decorative concentric decoration embellishes the inside center.  The outside shows a wonderful, colorful ancient patina over the bronze with the all surfaces covered with scattered, mineral encrustations. 

A bowl like this could have been used for ritual or ceremonial purposes, or have simply been a serving bowl of luxury for an ancient person of extreme wealth and status.  Rarely do ancient bronze bowls survive the ravages of time and of those that do, even less are ones that have been gilded, representing the pinnacle of opulence in ancient life.

The patina shows beautiful traits only found in authentic ancient objects.  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. 

In keeping with proper museum ancient bronze curation techniques, this specimen has been professionally cleaned and conserved in our lab to stabilize the patina and prevent modern deterioration, corrosion or bronze disease.  Metal artifacts that are not treated and properly conserved may corrode over time and even disintegrate into pieces. 

HISTORY

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.

WARNING:  There is an increasing number of fake ancient bronze objects on the market.  As fine quality intact, original specimens become more scarce and techniques have become more sophisticated to fake.  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 items 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.