Central Asiatic Silverware in Sasanian Times: A Reinterpretation of the Freer Bowl

Résumé En

The so-called “Bactrian bowls” reveal aspects of the cultural history of “Greater Iran” during the Sasanian period and have remained understudied until today. Even if they are often deprived of archaeological contexts, these pieces of silverware have been correctly located and dated by Boris Marshak as being executed in Bactria and neighbouring regions from the fourth to the fifth century onwards, after the Sasanian withdrawal but still under strong Sasanian influence. They combine Sasanian and “Hunnish” features with iconographic and literary motifs inherited or imported from the West, during the Hellenistic “colonization,” as well as through commercial contacts with the Roman Empire. By the rigorous study of their details, compared with Greek, Roman, and Iranian parallels, we can show how Greek mythical and historical characters, dressed in Indo-Iranian cloths, were addressed to the Eastern Iranian public. This is the case of Jocasta and Oedipus, illustrating the Zoroastrian xwēdōdah on a bowl found in Kustanai (now in the Hermitage), and also of Heracles and Hermes on a seventh-century bowl from the Stroganoff collection (also in the Hermitage). Using the same method, we would like to offer a new reading for the silver bowl in the Freer collection: This is not a collection of random tragic scenes but a representation of Bellerophon’s fatal destiny, which perhaps echoed that of Kay Kāwus to a culturally Iranian audience.