Roundel with horned animals

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This dome-shaped object may have decorated a pommel, the knob on the end of a dagger or sword handle opposite the blade. It is composed of a disc of shell, attached to a copper alloy backing by a rivet going through the center. The head of the rivet is covered with a sheet of gold foil. Around the edge of the disc runs a decorative pattern, formed of a gold foil frame arranged in a pattern of interlocking triangles, into which small inlays were set. Many of these small inlays have deteriorated or been lost completely, and those which remain appear to be made of carved shell. Inlaid into the surface of the disc are four rams, shown in profile and arranged head-to-tail with heads toward the center. In many areas of the shell surface that was hollowed out to form the bodies of the rams, a black residue is visible. This may be traces of bitumen, a tar-like substance that was used as an adhesive. The outlines of the rams are formed from strips of gold foil that may originally have been set into bitumen. Their bodies were inlaid in a contrasting material, perhaps a soft stone, which has now deteriorated into a powdery substance.

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