Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 8. (Budapest, 1965)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Ferenczy, László: A Saljuk bronze from Iran. A present from Sir Aurel Stein

event its joining would be similar to the small Egyptian bronze table at the Berlin State Museum, JTom the 9—10th centuries. This is 56 cm high and consists of five parts. Its stand is a tripod. The middle stem is joined to the tripod and to the tray by hexagonal joining pieces. However, the shape of every single piece is different from ours.

6 The Cairo Museum of Islamic Art kindly supplied me with the photographs of a two-part bronze, for which I express my thanks here. Though the base lacks the Siren-birds, the plastic representations, and the top section is missing, this bronze is the closest analogy to our piece so far (Fig. 6). In connection with the ornamentation of the pieces we may state the following: The decorative motifs of the stand may be found on Islamic bronzes of the 12—14th centuries. The siren-birds in the medallions occur rather frequently on bronzes of the 12—13th centuries. They are also found on a 12th century Iranian silver casket as well as on a silver vase at the Leningrad Ethnographic Museum

7 and on numerous other bronze objects. The siren-bird motif was customary in the Caucasian countries during the 12—14th centuries, mainly as ceramic ornamentation. The Armenian Historical Museum at Yerevan has a siren-bird shaped faience jug.

8 In Uzbekistan siren-birds were frequently represented with a nimbus; later, when the original meaning was becoming slowly lost, two almond-shaped ornaments appeared at its sides. This type of ornament is found on a number of dishes, pots, jugs, stands and incense-burners of the 11—13th centuries.

9 We do not know of siren representations from Iran in the age before the Arab conquest. Recent excavations in Piandjikent, however, offered some surprises in this field: among the ruins of an ancient city, located near Samarkand and occupied by the Arabs in the twenties of the 8th century, two architectural ornaments of clay were found in 1960; these represent fantastic creatures with human heads and bird-bodies, sirens. The pair might have been placed facing each other on the wall.

10 Before the appearance of these finds we knew but of a stucco-sculpture of a deva-bird from Varahsha in Central Asia. According to Belenitsky, reporting on the finds from Piandjikent, it is impossible at present to be certain whether these siren figures from Central Asia derive from the sirens known from Antique art, or from the Kinnaras in Buddhist art. He supposes, that their appearance in pairs implies the latter. We also find them in pairs in Begram and Bamiyan. Sirens in pairs also occur in the early Islamic art : on a bronze dish at the Victoria and Albert Museum we find a zodiac where two siren-birds represent the Gemini.

11 The picture of the bird-man used to be the symbol of the soul of a human 6 Glück, H. - Diez, E.: Die Kunst des Islam. Berlin, 1925. PI. 459/2. 7 Migeon, G.: Manuel d'art musiilman. Paris, 1927. vol. II. pp. 10, 15. 8 Guide to the Armenian National Historical Museum. (In Armenian) Yerevan, 1961. p. 74. 9 UyzamnKoea, F.A.—PeMneAb, U.M.: BbiAarouiHecH naiwHTHUKH H3o6pa3HTejibHoro HCKyccTBa y36cKHCTana. Tashkent, 1960. Fig. 16, PI. 192. ,0 EesieHuqicuu, A.M.: Pe3yju>TaTbi pacKonoK Ha ropoAwme ApeBHero IleHßwHKeHTa B 1960 r, TpyAbi A.H. T3A>KHKCKOÎÎ C.C.P. T. XXXIV. Dushanbe, 1962. p. 109, Fig. 18. 11 Grohmann, A.: Die Bronzeschale M. 388 — 1911 im Victoria and Albert Museum, in Aus der Welt der islamischen Kunst, Berlin, 1959. p. 129, m