vessel
- Museum number
- 1888,0927.3
- Description
-
Pottery Red Polished ware vessel in the shape of an inverted cow horn; hand-made; tubular body with slightly swelling sides, tapering to a point; slightly everted mouth, with pairs of perforations on each side, possibly for suspension; covered with a polished slip, fired red-orange throughout, decorated with lime-filled incisions: panels composed of five or six horizontal lines arranged around the body to form a chequer-board arrangement against the red background, three incised rings around the neck; surface worn in places.
- Production date
- 2100 BC-1950 BC
- Dimensions
-
Height: 15.24 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Most of the provenanced examples of horn models come from Bellapais-Vounous though two however were found at Nicosia-Ayia Paraskevi. Their meaning may be connected with the proliferation of bull/ horned-animal imagary in the EC period, perhaps related to changes in animal husbandry and the adoption of new symbolic systems (see Webb and Frankel) 2010).
Parallels:
Bellapais-Vounous Tomb 9 (Dikaios 1940, 24 nos 61 and 105, pl. XXXVIII, b and e) but note the curving end and the fact that the groups of horizontal lines are arranged in friezes separated by lines around the body of the horn (cf. Karageorghis 1991, 114, Hd6 and pl. LXIV:1; also 114-5 for other examples).
Bibliography:
Dikaios P. 1940, The excavations at Vounous-Bellapais in Cyprus, 1931-2. Archaeologia 88 (London: Society of Antiquaries).
Stewart J.B. Corpus of Cypriot artefacts of the Early Bronze Age. Part 4. SIMA III:4 (Uppsala: Åström).
Webb J. and Frankel D. 2010, 'Social strategies, ritual and cosmology in Early Bronze Age Cyprus: an investigation of burial data from the north coast', Levant 42, 185–209.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1888
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1888,0927.3
