Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This disc depicts the bust of a woman flanked on each side by smaller-scale rampant lions, indicating that the woman is likely Cybele (Magna Mater). The woman wears a low, flat crown covered with a long veil that also covers her back and arms. Her hair is pulled back into several sections, parted in the front, with loose, wavy locks hanging down either side of her neck. Her eyes are unnaturally large; her upper and lower lids are rendered in relief, and her pupils are small incised dots. Her nose and mouth are small in her oval face. The neck is rather fleshy and rendered in two horizontal segments. Her garment, fastened at each shoulder by a circular fibula, is visible under her veil. The veil covers much of her right arm, but her forearm is visible, crossing her chest and grasping her left hand, which is emerging from the drapery of the veil. Her hands appear to be resting on a vertical baldric with an incised “X” and thin bands on the sides. The lions on each side stand with their back paws together, front paws on the shoulder of the woman, bodies in profile, and heads turned frontally, possibly with mouths open and tongues lolling. The lions have molded manes, with locks of wavy hair surrounding their round faces. Above the lion on the left is a six-point star; above the lion on the right is a crescent moon (1).
The round, relief-decorated discs in this group (2001.179.1 through 2001.192, along with 2002.281) may not all have had the same use, and it is difficult to know what the exact function of each object was (2). Medallions of this type could have been used as matrixes to create thin, metal, particularly gold and silver, repoussé appliques as elements of decoration and jewelry, or they could have been used as decorative elements themselves (3). Some could have been decorative elements of furniture fittings (4). Others could have decorated horse harnesses or provided the matrix to create decoration for horse harnesses (5). Other potential uses are as decorative elements or models for decorative elements worn by individuals as part of jewelry or belt decorations, as seen in sculptural depictions (6). Some might have been devotional or votive objects in their own right (7).
NOTES:
1. For a closely comparable example, see S. D. Campbell, The Malcove Collection: A Catalogue of the Objects in the Lillian Malcove Collection of the University of Toronto (Toronto, 1985) no. 22. This piece was said to have been found in Lydia; see H. Grillot, “Médaillon au type de Cybèle,” Melanges Perrot (1903): 141-44. See also another bronze medallion of Cybele in H. Seyrig, “Antiquités syriennes: Le culte du Soleil en Syrie a l’époque romaine,” Syria 48.3-4 (1971): 337-73, esp. 367, fig. 6.5 = Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Astarte no. 16.
2. Similar medallions are known in other museum collections, including a medallion with a bust of Aphrodite in the Princeton University Art Museum, inv. no. y605, said to be from Syria; a medallion with a bust of Artemis in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 74.51.5537, from Cyprus; a medallion with the bust of a woman flanked by a child in the British Museum, London, inv. no. 1975,0316.23. For bust medallions of various sizes (from 1.5 to 13 cm) and levels of relief, see E. Babelon and J.-A. Blanchet, Catalogue des bronzes antiques de la Bibliothéque Nationale (Paris, 1895) 12-13, 55, 65-66, 110, 132, 178, 193, 214, 264, 316-17, 359-60, 369, and 445; nos. 25, 28, 120, 143-44, 253, 301, 400, 434, 491, 622, 712, 715, 827, 844, and 1022.
3. See M. Y. Treister, Hammering Techniques in Greek and Roman Jewellery and Toreutics, Colloquia Pontica 8 (Leiden, 2001) esp. “The Galjûb Hoard,” 253-73, and “Bronze Matrices in the Museums of Athens and Karlsruhe,” 362-71.
4. There are many surviving examples of this type, often with an animal, often a leopard, placing one or both forepaws on top of the medallion. Compare various examples in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. nos. 31630 and Fr. 1552 g 6-8; Babelon and Blanchet 1895 (supra 2) 474, no. 1133; and in the British Museum, London, inv. nos. 1856,1226.867 and 1872,1214.1.
5. See G. Greco, Bronzi dorati da Cartoceto: Un restauro, exh. cat., Museo Archaeologico, Florence (Florence, 1987) pls. 1-3 and 10-13. The horse heads had small round medallions decorated with busts in relief on the mouth, temples, and forehead of the harnesses. See also the gilt bronze horse head in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, inv. no. 54.759, which bears two medallions with busts, similar to this group in C. C. Mattusch, ed., The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes from North American Collections, exh. cat., Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University; Toledo Museum of Art; Tampa Museum of Art (Cambridge, 1996) 216-19, no. 20.
6. See the representation of an Archigallus (high priest) of Cybele, wearing a wreath decorated by circular medallions with busts, in LIMC Kybele no. 130. Marcus Caelius, a member of one of the three legions destroyed in the battle of the Teutoburger Forest in 9 CE, is represented in a cenotaph wearing various military awards, including phalerae in the form of medallions with heads, including one representing a gorgoneion, on his cuirass; see G. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries A.D., 3rd edn. (Norman, 1998) 132, pl. 6. For examples of relief bust medallions decorating belts, see F. Safar and M. A. Mustafa, Hatra: The City of the Sun God (Baghdad, 1974) 62, 64, and 210-11, nos. 3, 5, and 198 [in Arabic].
7. For example, 2001.189 and 2002.281; compare 1993.233.
Lisa M. Anderson
