Provenance
On 25 June 1892, a farmer, Andrei Fomich Zhdanov, found this silver plate decorated with a lioness alongside four torcs (grivnas) while tilling land along the Sepych River in the Okhanskii County (Оханский Уезд) of the Perm Governorate (Пермская Губерния) of the Russian Empire. When Zhdanov notified the Governor (Gubernator) of Perm, he described the location as ‘Onoshat’ (Оношат/Оношатъ). The Governor then notified the Imperial Archaeological Commission and sent the materials to Saint Petersburg. The Archaeological Commission transferred the plate to the Imperial Hermitage Museum in 1894. The plate remains in the collection of the renamed State Hermitage Museum with the number S-22.
The settlement called ‘Onoshat’ is a mysterious one; the earliest publication about the find in the Report of the Imperial Archaeological Commission only mentions the Volost’ (Sepychevskaia Volost’ / Сепычевская Волость), an administrative subdivision of the county/uezd (OAK za 1892, 94, no. 12a). I have not found Onoshat as a village or settlement name in official maps or documents of the Russian Empire; I suspect that it is an undocumented local indigenous name. That said, the find spot’s location along the Sepych River is useful: it should be relatively close to the present-day village of Sepych (Сепыч), located in the Vereshchaginskii District (Верещагинский Район) of the Perm Province/Krai (Пермский Край).
Inscription & Other Marking Notes
Four distinctive sets of Turkic Runes are on the base of the vessel. The script uses the Kuban alphabet. The Inscriptions have been studied by Igor’ Kyzlasov (Kyzlasov 1994, 267-268).
Technical Notes
silver with gilding / 20.5 cm diameter / 547.5 g weight
Major Eurasian Silver Publications
Darkevich, V. P. Khudozhestvennyi metall Vostoka VIII-XIII vv.: proizvedeniia vostochnoi torevtiki na territorii evropeiskoi chasti SSSR i Zaural’ia. Moscow: Nauka, 1976. [T. 4,1 № 28]
Orbeli, I. A., and K. V. Trever. Sasanidskii metall khudozhestvennye predmenty uz zolota, serebra, i bronzy. Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia, 1935. [T. 33]
Smirnov, Ia. I. Vostochnoe serebro: atlasʺ drevnei serebrianoi i zolotoi posudy vostochnago proiskhozhdeniia naidennoi preimushchestvenno vʺ prědelakhʺ Rossiiskoi imperii. Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the Imperial Archaeological Commission, 1909. [T. LXIII; XCII № 105]
Trever, K. V., and V. G. Lukonin. Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987. [T. 113 № 39]
Additional Bibliography
Kyzlasov, I. L. Runicheskie pis’mennosti evraziiskikh stepei. Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura RAH, 1994.
Otchet Imperatorskoi Arkheologicheskoi Komissii za 1892. No. 40. Saint Petersburg: Tipografiia glavnogo upravleniia udelov, 1894.
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. 113.
Page Images
(1) K. V. Trever and V. G. Lukonin, Sasanidskoe serebro: sobranie Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha: khudozhestvenniia kul’tura Irana III-VIII vekov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1987), T. 113.
(5) I. L. Kyzlasov, Runicheskie pis’mennosti evraziiskikh stepei (Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura RAH, 1994), K.2.1.