Fitz Jenő (szerk.): The Celts in Central Europe - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 20. A Pannon konferenciák aktái 2. (Székesfehérvár, 1975)

J. V. S. Megaw: The orientelizing theme in early celtic art: East or West

THE ORIENTA LÍZING THERE IN EARLY CELTIC ART: EAST OR WEST?

It is thirty years now since P. Jacobst h a 1 commented as follows on one of the three elements which he saw lying behind the development of early La Tène art:

,The Eastern components offer great difficulties. There was no trade with the East, there are no imports, the employment by the Celts of Oriental artisans is doubtful’!1).

Recently there has been considerable discussion of this difficult problem and, since whatever else may be in dispute it is not the presence of Eastern components in Celtic art but rather the method of their transmission, some further consideration of the present topic is inevitable at almost every stage of this conference’s deliberations. Foremost in this discussion has been N. Sandars who in several papers(1 2) has argued in support of a close stylistic relationship of East and West on the basis of ,oriental borrowings’ from Achaemenian and Scythian workshop products and the historically well attested Persian presence in Thrace from the time of Darius’ raids on the Danubian Lands in 513 BC to Xerxes’ retreat in 479 BC. Again, archaeology no less than the somewhat wayward narrative of Herodotos(3) has estab(1) P. Jacobsthal, Early Celtic, art. Oxford, 1944 (reprinted with corrections 1969), 160. — hereafter abbreviated EC A.

(2) N. K. Sandars, Cimmerians, Phrygians, Achaemenians and south-east Europe. Actes du VII- CISPP Prague, 1966, 2, 1971, 873 — 7; In., Orient and orientalizing in early celtic art. Antiquity, XLV, 1971, 103 — 12; In., Orient and orientalizing: recent thoughts reviewed, (eds.); C. F. C. Hawkes — P.-M. Duval, Celtic art in protohistoric Europe. London, 1975, in press

(3) On Herodotos and the Celts see most recently F.

Fischer, Die Kelten bei Herodot. Madrider Mitt.,

XIII, 1972, 109 -24.

(In memóriám T. G. E. P. f 8. 7. 197-5) lished a general commonality of nomadic, perhaps Thracian rather than Scythian, culture extending at least to the eastern Alps. The work of M. Duse k(4) and M. Párducz (whose recent death is a great loss to Iron Age studies)(5) has shown that this general cultural area spreads out from the Great Hungarian Plain into Moravia. In such a context occasional stray finds are to be expected; the best known of these is the Witaszkowo-Vettersfelde, Kr. Guben gold hoard of the sixth — early fifth century BC — it is immaterial whether this unique example in the west of early Graeco-Scythian art is to be regarded as booty or belonging to a Scythian retreating from Darius’ Balkan expedition(6). Relationships between the art of Thrace and that of even pre-(4) M. DuSek, Waren Skythen in Mitteleuropa und Deutschland? PZ, XLII, 1964, 49 — 76.

(5) M. Párducz, Western relations of the Scythian age culture of the Great Hungarian plain. AAntHung, XIII, 1965, 273 — 301; In., Die Fragen der Ethnischen Verhältnisse der Skythenzeit und der skythischkeltischen Berührungen in Ungarn. Altor., XXIII, 1971, 585 — 96; Id., Probleme der Skythenzeit im Karpatenbecken. AArehHung, XXV, 1973, 27 — 63.

(6) Celtic scholars are also familiar with this type of interpretational problem as represented in the late Hallstatt period by such outlying rich burials in north-western Europe as that from Wijehen, Gelderland : S. J. de Laet — W. Glasbergen, Der Voorgeschiedenis der Ijage Landen. Groningen, 1959, 162 and PI. 37; J. V. S. Megaw, Art of the European Iron Age. Bath, 1970, no. 16 (hereafter abbreviated A El A). — For Vettersfelde see especially T. Malinowski, Interpretationsmöglichkeiten der skythischen Goldfunde von Witaszkowo (Vettersfelde). Arbeits- und Forschungsber. /. Sächsischen Bodendenkmalpflege, XVI — XVII, 1967, 247 — 66.

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