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Clasp with an eagle and its prey dating from the Parthian Empire

Met curator Fiona Kidd on portable wealth in Clasp with an eagle and its prey dating from the Parthian Empire, c.  1st–2nd century, C.E.

This solid gold ornament is in the form of a roundel with two projecting elements that have slots for the attachment of a strap. The rim of the roundel, consisting of eighteen thumbnail-shaped cells for turquoise inlay in the manner of some Sarmatian roundels, frames the openwork figure of an eagle in high relief. Grasping a small, crouching animal in its talons, the bird perches in three-quarter view, facing right, with its chest extended and the rest of its body receding into the background. Its wings are outspread, the one on the left seen emerging from behind the swelling of the chest and the one on the right receding into the back plane. The body and legs carry ridges and linear patterning to suggest the texture of feathers. The bird's head is in profile, with a cell for the prominent ear, a protrusion at the eye area, a curved beak, and a downcurved line for the mouth. The entire figure is worked in the round, although the back is distorted and not as carefully finished as the front. The eagle's prey has been variously identified as an antelope, a goat, and a hare. Turquoise is inlaid in its large ear and in several places on its body. The tabs on either side of the roundel have cells for inlays at the corners in the form of debased acanthus leaves.

This piece is one of a pair; its mate, in the British Museum, London, depicts an eagle facing the opposite way. It was thought by Ernst Herzfeld to be part of a treasure found in 1910–11 in a chamber tomb near Nihavend in Iran. Herzfeld speculated that this trove had belonged to an aristocratic Parthian family and had originally included a group of Roman gold coins of the first to second century C.E. that surfaced independently in modern times. Another related piece of jewelry, found in excavations at Dalverzin Tepe in Iran, can be dated archaeologically to the first century C.E.

View this work on metmuseum.org.  

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Video transcript

This piece was worn by an individual. That’s one of the amazing things about it. We don’t know exactly how it was worn; it could have been a belt buckle, it could have been a clasp to hold together a cloak, some sort of personal ornament. We assume it was worn in mobile societies in the Eurasian Steppes, about two thousand years ago. We don’t often find these sorts of remains. Nomadic cultures don’t have architecture and cities, so it was important that they could carry their wealth. We see a predatory bird clasping its prey in its talons. The wings are outspread. There’s a circular frame inlaid with turquoise pieces – obviously a lot of them are missing now. And then on either side there are two rectangular projections. Presumably they were to feed a leather strap through. On the top and the bottom we see half acanthus leaves, and on the left hand side, there’s a stud, and that was presumably to fasten the leather strap. It’s not a piece that would immediately be recognized as being beautiful in the classical sense of the word. It appears quite clunky because the wings are squashed somewhat by the circular frame, but when this piece was worn, the engraved markings would have caught the light. The chest is raised up and it gives this sense of power. I think it certainly raises questions about not only the wearer, but who commissioned the piece and who actually made this piece. Where were they trained? Where did they acquire the materials? There weren’t that many places where the turquoise could be sourced, so the person who commissioned this piece was obviously in a position of power. If you were a member of the elite in the steppe world, you had to show that you were able to garner the resources to hold your position. The notion of a predator would have been very resonant, because in many ways you did have to be predatory to survive, especially as a member of the elite. The wearer wanted to broadcast to the people around them their position. It’s this tension between the dominator and the dominated that shaped a lot of the history of this world. As an archaeologist, I’m interested in people, I’m interested in the people that populated this world two thousand years ago. And so rarely do we get a real snapshot of an individual. This piece is quite small, but it certainly packed a punch. It’s very, very powerful, not only for the wearer, but for us as well.