| Original Message: Bactrian bronze amulets |
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Hello, Ali, I hope you're in good health. I've been wanting to reply to your post, but I've been very busy and haven't had time to dig out the things I wanted to show. I like your little animals a lot. I'm pretty sure they were intended to be pendants, not strung together as beads on a necklace - amulets for good fortune possibly. I don't think i've seen such a lot of them together in one field! I'm not sure I can recognize what animal they represent - a mountain deer or goat of some sort possibly?? I would say they're Bactrian, from the first millennium BCE, maybe as late as the period of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the century after Alexander. It's difficult to say because Bactria means different things at different periods in history and was open to a huge number of extensive foreign influences - which is what makes it so fascinating as a series of cultures. I'll post four of mine here. They come from the area of Bokhara in southern Uzbekistan. The man who sold them to me said they came from a road construction to the south of the ancient city (this was in the Soviet period). He showed me the site, but I don't have any proof - people tell you all kinds of things. The first is, I think, a dromedary (not a Bactrian camel!), and the second is difficult to be sure of, but I think probably a lion - there were a lot of lion amulets, second only to those horned animals like yours. All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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