Ivory disc engraved with a bull
Late Bronze Age, about 1300-1200 BC
From Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus
A delicately incised 'drawing' from the Bronze Age world
The small number of ivories from the Late Bronze Age town of
Hala Sultan Tekke were probably carved locally and, like other
products of Cypriot ivory workshops at this time, they show
influences from both east and west.
The theme of the bull with a backward-turning head has a long
history in Mycenaean Greece, and is ultimately derived from the art
of Minoan Crete. This example is particularly freely drawn, the
incised line firmly and surely outlining the graceful animal. There
is even an unusual attempt at a three-quarter view, shown in the
position of the horns.
The disc may originally have been the lid of a cylindrical box
in ivory or wood.
P. Aström, 'Ivories from Hala Sultan Tekke' in Ivory in Greece and the East-1, British Museum Occasional Paper 85 (, 1992)