Belt Element or Archer's Armband
Unknown · Iron Age II-III, 1st millennium BC
A curved sheet of bronze, twenty centimetres long, is decorated with a pattern of bundles tied in knots, repeated across its surface. The museum describes it as either part of a belt or an archer's armband, the guard an archer wears on the forearm to protect it from the snap of the bowstring. Its curve would fit either a waist or a wrist.
The piece is attributed to Luristan in western Iran and dated to the Iron Age, in the first millennium BC. Bronze belts and arm guards, often decorated with animals or geometric patterns, are common finds in Iranian cemeteries of this period and were worn by warriors as both armour and ornament. The knotted bundle motif is unusual and may imitate leather or cord bindings in metal. The Louvre bought the object in nineteen thirty four, when Luristan bronzes flooded the European market. Without an excavation record its exact use cannot be settled.
Did You Know? If it really is an archer's guard, the knotted pattern would have protected the same forearm that the bowstring slapped.
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