Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
Although 1992.256.134.A and 1992.256.134.B are of a similar diameter, they vary in overall shape, with 1992.256.134.A having a taller, more pronounced circular dome with a well-defined valley between the dome and uplifted edge. 1992.256.134.B has a lower dome and less of a valley between the dome and the uplifted edge. The underside of each bears faint traces of concentric circles. The center of each object is pierced by an iron rivet that would have affixed it to a wooden handle, if it functioned as a clapper, or to a ring, if it functioned as a finger cymbal (1). The instruments could have been used in secular or religious contexts, for instance in celebration of Artemis or Cybele, among others (2).
NOTES:
1. Compare examples in M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 428-29, nos. 620 (clappers) and 622 (finger cymbals). See also the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. nos. 10.130.1351-58.
2. For Artemis, see, for example, A. Villing, “For Whom Did the Bell Toll in Ancient Greece? Archaic and Classical Greek Bells at Sparta and Beyond,” Annual of the British School at Athens 97 (2002): 223-95, esp. 288-89 (Artemis). For Cybele, see, for example, R. Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire; trans. A. Nevill (Malden, MA, 1996) 53-54; E. Metropoulou, “The Goddess Cybele in Funerary Banquets and with an Equestrian Hero,” in Cybele, Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory of M. J. Vermaseren, ed. E. N. Lane (Leiden, 1996) 135-67, esp. 151-54.
Lisa M. Anderson
