boss;
electrotype
- Museum number
- 117907
- Title
- Object: Tarkondemos boss
- Description
-
Boss; electrotype copy of the silver boss of Tarkondemos, probably the top of a sword hilt, inscribed in cuneiform and in Hittite hieroglyphs round a figure of an Anatolian king.
- Production date
- 1500BC-1000BC (original)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 2 inches (about)
- $Inscriptions
-
-
- Curator's comments
-
Original object is in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. Cf. article by AH Sayce in 'Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology', VII (1880), pp.294 ff. Only one copy of this object is marked with its ID numbers, the other two are unmarked.
See C H Gordon, 'Western Asiatic seals in the Walters Art Gallery', London BSAI 1939, p24, plate VIII (69).
-
Two electrotype copies are with the boss which is slightly more rounded in profile and has a handle on the back in the shape of a fleur-de-lys. Presumably, this was designed to grip the boss whilst making an inpression from it.
Registration number of original is WAG 57.1512
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Fair
- Acquisition date
- 1926
- Acquisition notes
- The original object was acquired in Izmir (then known as Smyrna) by about 1861, when it was in the collection of Monsieur Alexander Jovanoff, a numismatist resident in Istanbul. A wax cast was made of this by M. Lenormant in about 1861, and supplied to Sayce; the original was offered to the BM but refused. An electrotype was made by Augustus Ready at this date however. Letter from Dorothy K. Hill of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, dated 3 February 1937, refers to its apparent purchase by Mr Henry Walters in 1925, and the supply of an impression made from the BM's electrotype; further correspondence on this matter dated 7 May, 1 June and 2 August (ANE Corres). Two other electrotype copies exist in the BM collection, one signed on the reverse "+AR TIN", the first initials possibly standing for "Augustus [P.] Ready".
- Department
- Middle East
- BM/Big number
- 117907
- Registration number
- 1926,0217.1
