Provenance
In 1941, government building construction workers found three vessels in the center of the city of Ufa (Уфа), then the Ufimskii District (Уфимский Район) of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic / Bashkir ASSR (Башкирская Автономная Советская Социалистическая Республика / Башкирская АССР) of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. About 70 cm from the surface, a worker hit and damaged a lidded container with a shovel, but the other two vessels– this plate decorated with a hunting scene and a bowl with an eagle hunting a gazelle– were not damaged (Voshinina 1953, 183, 193). The items were brought to the National Museum of the Republic of Bashkortostan in central Ufa. In 1945 the plate and the bowl were sent to the State Hermitage Museum, where they are still housed, while the lidded container fragment remains in Ufa. This plate has the number S-297.
Ufa is presently located in the Ufimskii District (Уфимский Район), Bashkortostan Republic (Республика Башкортостан) / Bashkiria (Башкирия), Russian Federation.
Technical Notes
silver with gilding / 20.3 cm diameter / 772.5 g weight
For an in-depth technical analysis, see Harper and Meyers 1981, 173.
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. 18]
Trever, K. V., and V. G. Lukonin. Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987. [T. 20-21 № 10]
Additional Bibliography
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.
Voshinina, A. I. “O sviaziakh Priural’ia s Vostokom v VI-VII vv. n. e.” Sovetskaia Arkheologiia XVII (1953): 184-196.
Image Credits
Featured Images
State Hermitage Museum Website
Page Images
(1) State Hermitage Museum Website
(2) K. V. Trever and V. G. Lukonin, Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987), T. 20.