Bronze bowl handles

From Cyprus, about 850-750 BC

Decorated with lotus flowers

These handles would have been riveted onto the upper sides of one or more roughly hemispherical bowls. The lotus flowers would have appeared above the rim. Bronze bowls of this variety are typically Cypriot and occur in Cyprus between about 1050 and 750 BC. However, none of the surviving examples is as large as the bowls to which these handles must have belonged. From Cyprus they were introduced to the Near East, the Greek world and Italy.

The bronze bowls perhaps derive from earlier Cypriot bowls of pottery that have a single handle that is visible over the rim. A roughly hemispherical bronze bowl has a single riveted handle and a knob, in place of a lotus flower, appearing above the rim. It comes from a Cypriot tomb of the mid-eleventh century BC, and may form a link between the pottery and the bronze series.

V. Tatton-Brown, Ancient Cyprus, 2nd ed. (London, The British Museum Press, 1997)

M-J. Chavane, 'Vases de bronze du Musée du Chypre', Collection de la Mason de lOri (1982)