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Sling bullet of Tissaphernes. (Photograph by Crawford H. Greenewalt, jr.)
Sling bullet of Tissaphernes
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 215
- Date
- 401-395 BC, Late Lydian (Persian)
- Museum
- Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 8225
- Museum Inventory No.
- 8225
- Material
- Lead
- Object Type
- Metalwork
- Metalwork Type
- Weapon or Armor
- Site
- Şahankaya?
- Description
- Lead, of almond shape. On the longitudinal center of one side, a text of eight legible raised letters in Greek gives ΤΙCCΑΦΕΡ.Ε... Length 36 mm, weight 40.423 g.
- Comments
- “The last letters (of the text) are illegible, but presumably contained the genitive ending of the name Tissaphernes” (Foss 1975, 28). Tissaphernes was satrap of Lydia from 413 to 395 BC. An implacable enemy of the Greeks, he is the “villain you love to hate” in Greek narratives of the Peloponnesian War and of Persian Prince Cyrus the Younger’s abortive attempt to gain the throne. The sling bullet may have been recovered near Şahan Kaya, in northern Lydia. It is one of the earliest extant examples of an inscribed bullet of molded lead, which became standard in later antiquity. As Foss has written, primarily on the evidence of Xenophon, Anabasis 3.3.6-4.5, Tissaphernes’ slingers evidently used sling bullets of stone prior to 401 BC; and the greater range of Rhodian sling bullets of lead over Persian sling bullets of stone, demonstrated in the retreat of the Ten Thousand, would have been a factor in the use of lead sling bullets by his slingers. For ancient sling bullets, see Korfmann 1973.
- See Also
- Greenewalt, “Introduction”.
- Bibliography
- Foss 1975; Foss 1987; Dedeoğlu 2003, 76, fig.; Roosevelt 2009, 242.
- Author
- CHG