Szabó Miklós, Petres F. Éva: Decorated weapons on the La Tene Iron Age in the Carpathian Basin. (Inventaria Praehistorica Hungariae 5; Budapest, 1992)

II. DRAGON-PAIR SWORDS

II. DRAGON-PAIR SWORDS It has been mentioned in the above that the upper part of the front plate of the Liter 1 scabbard (Cat.no. 39; PI. 43) bears a zoomorphic lyre motif (dragon/lyre or De Navarro's Type II dragon-pair). This motif was mutilated just below the scabbard mouth when the scabbard had originally been cut out or repaired, which is why at first glance it appears to be an S-shaped lyre.

126 The original design, however, matches exactly the zoomorphic lyre schema appearing on various Hungarian and non-Hungarian finds.

127 Fig. 18 St. Jean-sur-Tourbe, Type II dragon-pair motif on a iron scabbard (after Szabó [1914a] fig. 1.8] P. Jacobsthal considered this motif to be of ultimately Scythian ancestry and he dated its adoption to the period of the Early Style.

128 De Navarro to whom we owe the definition of the three dragon-pair types postulated a Schytian inspiration sometime during the 4th century B.C., and since most of the relevant sword scabbards known to him came from Hungary he located the adoption of the motif to Eastern Central Europe.

129 Even though recent studies on Celtic iconography have shown that the antithetic animal pair can be derived from the orientalising griffin motif,

130 the term "dragon" continues to be persistently used. These studies have at the same time clarified that this motif makes its first appearance in the western group of the Early Style in La Tène art.

131 The latter is also true of De Navarro's Type II dragon-pairs: the scabbard from St. JeansurTourbe ("Le Catillon", see Fig. 13) is earlier than the "eastern" specimens quoted by De Navarro.

132 The basic motif can be derived from the Etrusco-Italic repertory: suffice it here to quote Fig. 14 Monte Bibele, iron scabbard with Type II dragon-pair from grave 6 (after Vitait [1987] fig. S la)