Provenance
In 1893 Nikolai Vakhrameevich Buzmakov discovered a hoard of silver near the village of Tomyz’ (Томызь) in the Glazovskii County (Глазовский Уезд) of the Viatka Governorate (Вятская Губерния) of the Russian Empire. The findspot was about 7.5 km from the Kama River and about 2 km from the Tomyz’ River, a tributary of the Kama, and between two streams called the Kabakshur and Chepliakshur, both of which flow into the Tomyz’. The hoard includes ten vessels– 4 cups, 3 plates, 2 bowls, and the fragments of a bucket– and six torcs (grivnas). Based on weight, the Archaeological Commission sent 1250 rubles to Buzmakov for all of the hoard items. In early 1894 the Archaeological Commission sent all of the vessels except for the bucket to the Imperial Hermitage Museum; the fragments of the bucket and the torcs first went to the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society and then joined the rest of the hoard in the Hermitage later that year. (Trever and Lukonin 1987, 124; Darkevich 1976, 36) The items are all still housed in the renamed State Hermitage Museum. This plate has the number ω-110 .
Tomyz’ is part of a group of villages known as the Lytkinskoe Rural Settlement (Лыткинское сельское поселение) with their center at Lytka. Tomyz’ is presently in the Afanas’evskii District (Афанасьевский Район), Kirov Province/Oblast’ (Кировская Область), Russian Federation.
Inscription & Other Marking Notes
Four different control stamps– monograms and busts– on the base of the vessel, within the foot ring. The stamps date the vessel to the reign of Heraclius (613-629/30) (Dodd 1961, 201).
Technical Notes
silver with niello / 28 cm diameter
Major Eurasian Silver Publications
*Only mentioned in itemized lists in K. V. Trever and V. G. Lukonin, Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987), 124; V. P. Darkevich, Khudozhestvennyi metall Vostoka VIII-XIII vv.: proizvedeniia vostochnoi torevtiki na territorii evropeiskoi chasti SSSR i Zaural’ia (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 36.
Additional Bibliography
Dodd, Erica Cruikshank. Byzantine Silver Stamps. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1961.
Otchet Imperatorskoi Arkheologicheskoi Komissii za 1893. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia glavnogo upravleniia udelov, 1895.
Image Credits
Featured Image
State Hermitage Museum Website
Pages Images
(1) State Hermitage Museum Website
(2) Erica Cruikshank Dodd, Byzantine Silver Stamps (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1961), № 69.