Pair of bird-shaped handles

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These handles were once fixed, each by three rivets, to a hammered bronze shallow bowl or basin. They are in the form of stylized long-necked birds with outstretched wings and tail; a fixed rectangular handle rises from the wing tips. Each bird head, which faced out from the bowl, projects slightly forward, with a herringbone pattern on the beak and neck, and the eyes etched in simple concentric circles. The wings and tails are decorated by incised herringbone patterns to suggest separate feathers. Such bird-head protome attachments are represented in Near Eastern art in the round on buckets and cauldrons as well as on bowls and basins. They were popular in Assyria and Iran during the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.

Metropolitan Museum of Art