• latw-137-1
    Ivory disk earring. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)

    Ivory disk earring

    Date
    Ca. mid-6th c BC, Lydian
    Museum
    Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 6423
    Museum Inventory No.
    6423
    Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
    BI85.005
    Material
    Ivory
    Object Type
    Jewelry and Ornaments
    Site
    Sardis
    Sector
    MMS
    Trench
    MMS-I 85.1
    Locus
    MMS-I 84.1 Locus 34
    B-Grid Coordinates
    E144.6 / S69.3 *100.3
    Description
    Flat disc, pierced at center. Front side carefully decorated with an incised 18-petalled rosette, surrounded by panels with dots in centers, separated by double lines. Reverse plain, smoothly finished. Broken and mended, almost complete. Diameter 0.031 m, thickness 0.001-0.0022 m.
    Comments
    From a Lydian house destroyed in the mid-sixth century BC (Area 1, with Nos. 16, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 75, 81, 87, 88, 96, 97, 100, 102, 103, 138); found in a collection of unguent vessels, jewelry (including the faience hawk No. 138), and other personal items, perhaps originally stored in a box (Cahill, “City of Sardis”). No trace of attachment is preserved; it may have been in wire, now missing, or in a perishable substance. The identification as an earring is suggested, however, by the depiction of similar earrings, for instance on the ivory head of a woman (No. 52), on the figure on a terracotta revetment (No. 56), and on a painting from the Aktepe Tumulus (Özgen, “Lydian Treasure,”depicted in blue, perhaps reflecting the Lydian custom of painting or dyeing ivory, see Dusinberre, “Lydian Ivories”), and by somewhat similar disk-shaped earrings, such as No. 117.
    See Also
    Cahill, “City of Sardis”.
    Bibliography
    Greenewalt et al. 1988, 69, fig. 10.
    Author
    NDC