Folia archeologica 25.

Tóth Endre: Korabizánci kőfaragvány Felsődörgicséről

AN EARLY BYZANTINE STONE SCULPTURE FROM FELSŐDÖRGICSE In the Hungarian National Museum several stone sculptures are kept, acquired at the end of the last, resp. the beginning of this century, whose provenance is Felsődörgicse, County Veszprém — to-day united with Alsódörgicse under the name of Dörgicse (Fig. 1 ). One of them, a limestone slab of good quality, having a slightly pinkish hue, 98 to 100 cm in length, 45 cms in width and 8 to 10 cm in depth, is worth a special attention. One side is but roughly worked flat (Fig. 3), with traces of mortar, which, however, do not allow any conclusions as for a primary or secondary use. The roughness of the back side is, though, not to be attributed to a secondary use as there is a possibility that the smoothness of the back side was, even in its primary use, reached by a mortar layer. The front side of the slab shows a quadratic panelling, the dimensions of the panels being 19 X 20 cm. The fillets separating the panels are unadorned. From the sunken background of the panels animal figures rise to the level of the original surface (Fig. 2), their position indicating the one-time situation of the slab, which must have stood on one of its shorter sides; in its present state there is a border 5 cm in width of the same working as the left-side margin of the slab, showing this to be the lower part of the fragment. On the right side, where the original margin is preserved in the depth of the stone, the side has a smooth finish, pointing to the fact that the slab ended here (Fig. 4). Over the three panels the lower part of a fourth one is to be seen, showing the fragment of a foot (?), belonging to an indeterminable animal. If it was the last panel, the total height of the fragment must have been about 125 cm. In the first intact panel from the upper end there is a bear facing right, in the second a fish, in the third a horse or donkey facing right as well (Fig. 2). The animal figures fill the panels diagonally, in a zig-zag line. The left side of the relief near the panels was, in a width of 17 cms, unadorned, this part is worked flat and must have been evidently a jointure surface. In 1872 the Evangelical vicar of Felsődörgicse, János Pelargus, made a drawing after a stone carving, which shows the same decoration as the one preserved in the Hungarian National Museum, but having at least two vertical rows of panels (Fig. 5). The two sculptures seem to be different ones. Regarding its use and date, the relief furnishes us with an important clue to the history of Pannónia, or more exactly of the present Transdanubia, in the Early Migration Period. There are no similar stone sculptures known from Pannónia and the neighbouring provinces to be dated to the Roman period of these areas. As for its composition and style, the sculpture is, though, closely connected totheambi and other stone carvings of Ravenna, dated to the second half of the 6th century, further to some pieces from Hispania (cf. H. Schlunk, Madr. Mitt. 5 (1964) 234 sqq). Its representation and form point to the fact that the Felső-