Assurbanipal
Portrait.Gold model chariot from the Oxus treasure
Achaemenid Persian, 5th-4th century BC From the region of Takht-i Kuwad,
Tadjikistan This remarkable model is one of the most outstanding pieces
in the Oxus treasure, which dates mainly from the fifth and fourth
centuries BC, and is the most important surviving collection of gold and
silver to have survived from the Achaemenid period.
The model chariot is pulled by four horses or ponies. In it are
two figures wearing Median dress. The Medes were from Iran, the centre
of the Achaemenid empire. The front of the chariot is decorated with the
Egyptian dwarf-god Bes, a popular protective deity. The chariot can be
compared with that shown being ridden by the Persian king Darius on a cylinder
seal also in The British Museum.
A second fragmentary gold chariot now in The British Museum was
acquired by the Earl of Lytton, the Viceroy of India, about the same time
that the Oxus treasure was discovered and is thought to have come from
the same source.
Length: 18.8 cm
Bequeathed by Sir A.W. Franks
ANE 123908 Room 52, Ancient Iran, Case 27
M. Roaf, Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East
(New York, 1990), p. 221
J. Curtis, Ancient Persia (London, The British Museum Press, 2000),
p. 63, fig. 70
