Garam Éva szerk.: Between East and West - History of the peoples living in hungarian lands (Guide to the Archaeological Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum; Budapest, 2005)

HALL 5 - The Iron Age: The Scythians and the Hallstatt culture (800-450 B.C.) (Tibor Kemenczei)

45. Gold cup from Budapest-Angyalföld. 8th century B.C. 1. POTTERY AND METAL FINDS Modelled on eastern types, most of the bronze bits and strap distributors (Füzesabony-Öregdomb, grave 3; Biharugra; Fig. 44) were produced in the workshops of the Great Hungarian Plain. Comparable horse harness finds are known from the steppe north of the Caucasus, from southern Russia and the Ukraine. The ancestry of the iron spearheads (Dunakömlőd), iron daggers (Szôhy) and bronze maces (Biharugra) made by the craftsmen of the Danube-Tisza region can be similarly traced to eastern prototypes. The bronze strap distributors decorated with three interlocking bird heads from Biharugra were conceived in the spirit of steppean art, as was the bronze sceptre topped with a horse head recovered from the Sárvíz Channel. disc shaped bridle ornaments from Besenyszög-Fokorupuszta, the ribbed gold cup from Budapest-Angyalföld (Fig. 45) and the necklace of winged beads from Pusztaegres-Pusztahatvan, echoes the art of the Ciscaucasian region. Other articles in these gold hoards, such as the knob decorated gold cups (Budapest-Angyalföld), the tores, the spiral terminalled bracelets and the fibulae (Besenyszög-Fokorupuszta) suggest that the craftsmen of the Tisza region blended the earlier, local metalworking traditions with forms and designs drawn from the metalwork flourishing in the northern Balkans. THE SCYTHIAN PERIOD EAST OF THE DANUBE (Later 7th century-early 4th century B.C.) 7. GOLD HOARDS The gold hoards from this period bear witness to the ingenuity and exceptional skills of the goldsmiths of the 8th century B.C. Gold was procured from the Transylvanian mines. The style of this goldwork, represented for example by the decoration of the diadem and the The grave goods from the Middle Iron Age burials of the Great Hungarian Plain and the Northern Mountain Range bear a striking similarity to archaeological assemblages from Scythia, the territory north of the Pontic. Some of the finds have good parallels among the contemporary assemblages from the Kuban and the Ciscaucasian steppe and from the Greek colony at Olbia on the northern shores