Bit Plaque with Winged Lions and Ibexes
Unknown · Iron Age, early 1st millennium BC (undated in museum record)
Two winged lions seize two ibexes on this openwork bronze plaque, their bodies arranged symmetrically around a central hole. The plaque is a cheekpiece, one of a pair that flanked a horse's mouth at either end of the bit, and the hole is where the mouthpiece passed through. It is about fourteen centimetres wide, and every creature is rendered in crisp, stylised outline.
Decorated horse bits are among the most typical products of the Luristan bronze workshops of western Iran in the early first millennium BC, and many were buried with their owners, sometimes placed under the head of the dead. The mixture of winged lions and mountain goats belongs to a world of herders and horsemen for whom animals of prey and animals of the flock were daily companions. The Louvre acquired the plaque in nineteen fifty eight. As with most Luristan bronzes, no excavation record exists, so its exact origin and date are not documented.
Did You Know? A horse wearing this bit would have carried a lion on each cheek.
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