Provenance
The plate decorated with a figure seated on a couch and a hunting scene below was found sometime before 1908 just beyond the village of Strelka (Стрелка) on the edge of a high terrace overlooking the Sylva River. Strelka was then located in the Kungurskii County (Кунгурский Уезд) of the Perm Governorate (Пермская Губерния) of the Russian Empire. Strelka resident Ivan Fedotovich Rozhkov found the vessel and kept it in his home until he gave it to the Kungar Regional Museum around 1908 (after Leshchenko in Trever and Lukonin 1987, 125). In 1923 a Perm State University student shared a photograph with his professor of archaeology, Aleksei Viktorovich Schmidt, who further shared the photograph with Iosif Abgarovich Orbeli in 1923. Orbeli then acquired the plate for the State Hermitage Museum in 1926 (where he was a curator and in that year became head of the Oriental Department; he would become the museum director in 1934). The plate is still housed in the State Hermitage Museum with the number S-520.
Strelka is presently located in the Kishertskii District (Кишертский Район), Perm Province/Krai (Пермский Край), Russia.
Inscription & Other Marking Notes
A name in Hephthalite is inscribed on the base of the vessel.
Technical Notes
silver with gilding / 26 cm diameter / 985.6 g weight
For an in-depth technical analysis, see Trever and Lukonin 1987, Tablitsa VIII, s. 141; Harper and Meyers 1981, p. 173, Pl. 19.
Major Eurasian Silver Publications
Harper, Prudence Oliver, and Pieter Meyers. Silver Vessels of the Sasanian Period. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, published in association with Princeton University Press, 1981. [Pl. 19]
Orbeli, I. A., and K. V. Trever. Sasanidskii metall khudozhestvennye predmenty iz zolota, serebra, i bronzy. Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia, 1935. [T. 13]
Trever, K. V., and V. G. Lukonin. Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987. [T. 18-19 № 9]
Additional Bibliography
Demange, Françoise, ed. Les Perses sassanides: Fastes d’un empire oublié (224-642). Paris: Musée Cernuschi, 2006.
Harper, P. O. “Thrones and Enthronement Scenes in Sasanian Art.” Iran 17 (1979): 49–64.
Overlaet, Bruno, ed. Splendeur des Sassanides: l’empire perse entre Rome et la Chine, 224-642. Brussels: Musées royaux d’art et d’histoire, 1993.
Image Credits
Featured Image
K. V. Trever and V. G. Lukonin, Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987), T. 19.
Page Images
(1-4) K. V. Trever and V. G. Lukonin, Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987), T. 18-19.