Vorderasiatischer Schmuck zur Zeit der Arsakiden und der Sasaniden.

• Author: Kawami, Trudy S.

This helpful work will be an aid to all working with Parthian and Sasanian jewelry, but it does not present the broad synthesizing overview that one might expect, given the title and the distinguished series in which it appears. Most of the book is concerned with the Parthian (Arsacid) period (ca. 250 B.C.-224 A.D.), with the emphasis on jewelry and its representations from the wealthy caravan city of Palmyra in the Syrian desert. The introduction to the Arsacid portion (10 pp.) is, for the most part, a survey of the writings of Rostovtzeff, Ackerman, and others on Palmyra. It also covers the excavated jewelry of Dura Europos and recounts the supposed struggles between the Hellenistic jewelry tradition and "old Iranian" elements.

The author identifies four strands or traditions in the jewelry of this period: 1) Hellenistic Greek, featuring small earrings and the use of filigree and granulation; 2) the "new Iranian tradition" of wide belts with decorative metal plaques; 3) an "old Iranian" tradition identified with Scythians and Sarmatians and characterized by the use of semi-precious stones in encrustation, and 4) a Syro-Mesopotamian tradition, developed between the first through the third centuries A.D. This last tradition is said to incorporate Hellenistic and Roman elements featuring gold and silver wire-work combined with granulation, glass, cloisonne and semi-precious stones set in medallions.

Perhaps because Palmyra had virtually no history before the Parthian period, the introduction conveys the impression that Near Eastern jewelry had no previous history either. This, of course, is not the case. Achaemenid jewelry (late 6th-late 4th century B.C.),(1) as well as the products of the Neo-Assyrian (8th-7th centuries B.C.) royal workshops,(2) already display a well-developed craft tradition. The finds at ancient Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh), about 175 km northwest of Palmyra, document the production of elegant jewelry in Syria in the first half of the second millennium B.C.(3) The designation of "new" and "old" Iranian traditions is problematic, as is the assumption that wide belts with metal plaques are Iranian in origin. These belts do not appear in Iran until the Parthian period and it is likely that their source lies farther east and north. Similarly the connection of an "old" Iranian inlay tradition to Scythian craftsmen is particularly questionable in view of the major role played by Greek craftsmen in the production of much Scythian...