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Fragment of a terracotta sima, with winged horse. (©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College)
Fragment of a terracotta sima, with winged horse
The Lydians and their World
(2010)
Cat. 57
- Date
- Lydian
- Museum
- Manisa, Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum, 1675
- Museum Inventory No.
- 1675
- Sardis or Museum Inv. No.
- T62.005
- Material
- Terracotta
- Object Type
- Architectural Terracotta
- Architectural Terracotta Type
- Sima
- Site
- Sardis
- Sector
- AC
- Trench
- AcT
- B-Grid Coordinates
- Acropolis Grid: E 7.5-E 7.5/N 21-N 21; * 402.8-402.8
- Description
- Terracotta fragment of a horizontal sima, preserving part of the spout (at lower right); molded and painted with cream, dark sepia, and red-brown slips, showing parts of a winged horse, rearing to right, and a narrow bar with hook end over the spout. Background, foreparts, and wing of horse are covered with cream slip; outlines of head, neck, and wing, eye and muzzle details, mane crest, hither foreleg, pinfeather zone, and long feather borders are in dark; lower mane, further foreleg, alternate long feathers of wing, and middle and hindquarters are in red. The bar is black, the spout is red. Height 0.16 m, width 0.240 m, thickness 0.023 m.
- Comments
- Recovered from the summit of the Sardis Acropolis. The fragment belongs to a horizontal sima tile, decorated with a pair of winged horses, confronted on either side of the spout; with a plant motif (?), to which the hook-end bar belongs, above the spout. The design is a type that was common on horizontal sima tiles at Sardis, showing a pair of confronted, rearing winged horses flanking a water spout, like No. 59 and the reconstructed ones, No. 60. For other examples, see Shear 1926, 31-33 nos. 12, 13, pls. IX, X; Åkerström 1966, 71-73 no. 7, pls. 40, 41; Ramage 1978, 20-21 nos. 21, 22; and Sardis Expedition inventory no.
T09.002 . Definition of form is typically crisp. - See Also
- Ateşlier, “Architectural Terracottas”; Greenewalt, “Horsemanship”.
- Bibliography
- Ramage 1978, 20, no. 19, fig. 50; with older bibliography.
- Author
- CHG