THE FORM OF THE CUP

The cup is of globular form with a plain flat base, a short upright neck slightly flared at the junction with the body and a thickened, slightly everted rim that is hammered flat on top (diameter: 120mm [max]; height: 92mm; weight: 370.6g; approximate metal composition [at rim]: 75–8 per cent silver, with copper, zinc and lead).Footnote ¹⁰ Traces of mercury gilding were detected on the outside, both in the incisions on the bodies of the animals and on the ground, while the interior is completely gilded. The stems, leaves and grapes of the plant and vine scroll motifs were enhanced with niello inlaid in grooves or dots, but only remnants survive in the upper half of the cup. There is a dent on one side, just above the base.

The cup has no handle, although originally it probably had a lid like those on the vessels from Spain and the Galloway Hoard. The Spanish exemplar is of the same form as Vale of York and is also decorated with vine scrolls, birds and acanthus, but without the encircling roundels, and was probably made around the mid-ninth century in Lotharingia within the circle of the Metz/Reims centres for Charlemagne’s programme of classical renovatio.Footnote ¹¹ The knob of the lid of the vessel from Spain, with its four leaves of acanthus, may be compared with the quatrefoil rosette on the base of a Byzantine, nielloed silver dish dated 527–65 from the Gavar, formerly Novobayazet, region (in Armenia).Footnote ¹² Lids were added to western vessels for ecclesiastical use. The unprovenanced, contemporary (or later) lid from another such vessel, decorated with acanthus leaves, huntsmen and animals, is kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).Footnote ¹³ Indeed, it is surmised by Wamers that the gaze of the six Vale of York animals, particularly of the stag and lion, was focused on ‘the original lid, which may have had a cross-shaped knob for a handle, or some other symbolic, or even figural, depiction of Christ’.Footnote ¹⁴

The lids and internal gilding suggest that the group of related vessels may originally have been for liturgical use; for example, as pyxes for containing the consecrated bread of the Eucharist or as containers for chrism or incense, the contents being kept from contact with baser metal by the gilding.Footnote ¹⁵ Their later Viking possessors may have been aware of their spiritual significance and reused them as treasured containers for serving out drink; it has been further suggested that they may have discarded the redundant lids and cut them up as hack-silver, reflecting the cups’ change from ecclesiastical to secular use.Footnote ¹⁶ There is a patch of slight abrasion on the base of the Vale of York cup, while the exterior gilding is partially missing and may have been deliberately removed for reuse, unless its loss was just through wear and tear or rough cleaning. But it is notable that the gilding on the base of the Spanish cup also appears to have been rasped or filed off.

THE DECORATION OF THE CUP

The animal motifs of the Vale of York cup are presented in a balanced, asymmetrical composition of two groups of three developing to the left and right of, and including, two back-to-back running deer/antelope/unicorns with their heads turned back to face each other (fig 2, L1 and R1).Footnote ¹⁷ In the left-hand group the central roundel (L2) encloses a large, leaping feline to left (either a lioness forming a pair with the lion in the central roundel of the right-hand group (R2), or perhaps a pard or panther without distinguishing stripes or spots), which chases a stag in the next roundel to the left (L3). In the central roundel of the right-hand group (R2), a lion chases an equine in the next roundel to the right (R3), which is probably an Asiatic wild ass, or onager, rather than a horse, since the latter does not feature in extant bestiaries before the late twelfth century.Footnote ¹⁸ Even when a horse appears in a miniature of the ninth-century illuminated copy of the Physiologus in the Berne Stadtbibliothek), which may date from around the 830s–40s, it is shown with a rider on its back.Footnote ¹⁹ The two big cats face forwards, as if to their intended prey, while the other animals face backwards. It may be significant, however, that the former do not pounce on the latter, as distinct from more typical hunt scenes, nor are human figures or hounds depicted.

Fig 2.

Rolled-out drawing to show the decorative roundels and representative central sections of the other panels of the Vale of York cup. The numbered letters ‘L’ and ‘R’ beneath the roundels indicate the ordered placing of the latter, respectively left and right of the centre line. Drawing: Stephen Crummy.

The ‘spandrels’ between the roundels are filled above and below with fans of acanthus foliage on long stems. The stems extend between the roundels and are joined at each end by double or triple-ribbed collars, except where the roundels with the stag and onager are closed up.

Round the neck and base of the cup run two bands of vine scrolls with W-shaped, double collars at the nodes with the stems and heart-shaped bunches of dot-punched grapes alternating with lobed leaves. The grapes in the upper scroll are indicated by four or five punched dots, while those of the lower one show six or seven. The bands are demarcated from the roundels by cable-patterned cordons, while a narrower, plain cordon stands between the band on the neck and the rim. Traces of niello remain in the veins of the leaves and in the median grooves in the stems of both the leaves and the clusters of grapes. The use of niello to pick out details in this way is comparable with the cups from Halton Moor and Włocławek (see below).Footnote ²⁰

ORIGINS OF THE FORM

The broad-bellied form with raised neck of the Carolingian group of vessels has no earlier parallels in the West. On the one hand, it may be compared with an early seventh-century Byzantine silver censer from Egypt, except for its foot-ring, while Marschak, on the other hand, indicates Turkic models of similar date.Footnote ²¹ Wamers has drawn a comparison with certain Byzantine silver and copper-alloy ecclesiastical vessels such as chalices and thuribles of the sixth to seventh centuries, mainly from Italy, Syria or the Syria-Palestine region.Footnote ²² On the whole, though, and significantly lacking the decoration of animals in roundels (see below), they do not appear to provide such close parallels as the Oriental vessels, which are also closer in date to the Vale of York cup. In addition, it seems highly unlikely that church plate would have been traded with the West, whereas at least four secular Oriental vessels do appear to have been. The known vessels are: an ‘Eastern’ (Persian?) silver bowl from Terslev in Denmark; a small undecorated cup from the late tenth-century seeress’s grave 4 at Fyrkat in Denmark, of globular form with collared vertical neck more like a miniature version of the Vale of York cup or an eastern Iranian handled bowl from Azov; a plain copper-alloy bowl originating from the Middle East/Persia or Central Asia (close in form to the eastern Iranian bowl from Azov noted in the next section); and a jug from a cremation grave of the early tenth century from Klinta (in Öland, Sweden).Footnote ²³ The original presence of handles on the cup from Włocławek further favours an Asiatic over a Byzantine derivation (see below). The origin of the sets of small silver cups from Fejø, Ribe, Terslev, Lejre and single examples from other sites in Scandinavia is harder to define and they may be locally made, although Russian parallels are noted by Wilson.Footnote ²⁴ Other early Oriental and Islamic types of artefact are known from early medieval Scandinavia.Footnote ²⁵

There are two other vessels to be considered in this context: the Sasanian ‘Chosroes’ bowl of gold cloisonné with rock crystal, glass and semi-precious stone (also known as the ‘Tasse de Salomon’), which dates from the sixth or seventh century and seems likely to have been a diplomatic gift associated with the embassies from the Abbasid court in Baghdad to Charlemagne and Louis the Pious at Aachen at the end of the eighth and early ninth century, if not before; and possibly also the Sasanian silver-gilt dish showing a king hunting on horseback who is probably Yezdegerd iii (632–51), and a carnelian cameo with the head of another king.Footnote ²⁶ Other Oriental metalwork, which certainly reached the West at this time, includes the famous mechanical brass water-clock and two brass candlesticks given by Harun al-Rashid to Charlemagne.Footnote ²⁷

In line with such imports, the prototypes for the form of the Vale of York cup and others in its group appear to be provided by Byzantine-influenced, Oriental silverware in Sasanian and post-Sasanian tradition rather than by Byzantine metalwork per se. It can be seen that the production of metal vessels in Central Asia began to flourish after the Arab defeat of the Sasanids in 642, while traditional Sasanian vessel types still continued to be made by conservative craftsmen in the region of ancient Iran.Footnote ²⁸ For example, although the Vale of York cup never had a handle, its body profile and size may be closely paralleled by one of the three main forms of Oriental silver: the single-handled ‘kantharos’ of Marschak’s School B used in Central Asian and Avar metalware of the seventh to eighth centuries, which in turn appears to have had its roots in Roman silver and shows close links with Sogdian and Central Asian pottery of the end of the seventh/early eighth century. Handled silver cups with globular form and upright necks, with or without foot-rings, like the example from the mouth of the Don noted below, are assigned by Marschak to his School B, which is connected with Sogdiana/Sogdia and its vicinity, the Persian region centred on the city of Samarkand. Sogdiana was an important centre of silver-working in the transmission of types from east to west. The second phase of output from the School dates from the end of the seventh/earlier eighth century, but its first phase appeared already in the sixth century even before the Arab conquest; cf the pottery cups from graves in Russia, Latvia and the example from Hemse annexhemman (in Gotland, Sweden), which were probably imported from northern Iran via Russia.Footnote ²⁹ Indeed, the pottery cups underline the very groundedness of the form in Central Asia, the antiquity of which is demonstrated by comparison with a gold cup with zoomorphic handle of the first century ad from the Khokhlach barrow near Novocherkassk.Footnote ³⁰ Like the cup from Włocławek, the Sasanian silver vessels are provided with handles and some also with a foot-ring.Footnote ³¹ These parallels have led Skubiszewski to derive the form of the Polish cup from Sasanian models, further comparing the half-animal half-human head in relief, which supported one of its two lost handles, with masks on the pottery of Khotan and the costume of its figures with early Persian dress.Footnote ³² The absence of handles on the Vale of York cup does not therefore present a serious obstacle to the derivation of its form from Central Asia. Indeed, Shetelig observed that the animal panels of the related Halton Moor cup were reminiscent of Sasanian work.Footnote ³³

CONTEMPORARY PARALLELS FOR THE FORM

Sasanian and post-Sasanian silverware is especially common in finds from north and south Russia; for example, an eighth- to ninth-century eastern Iranian/Central Asian handled wine-cup with foot-ring from Tomyz’, Kirovskaya obl, and an eastern Iranian handled example without foot-ring from Azov.Footnote ³⁴ The small group of apparently derivative western European vessels, to which the Vale of York cup belongs, was made in workshops of the Carolingian Empire and an artistic ‘homeland’ for it in the region between Lotharingia/West Francia, Saxony and Swabia has been proposed.Footnote ³⁵ Both the Vale of York and Halton Moor cups may have been produced specifically at the monastery of St-Germain-des-Prés (see above).

The closest parallel to the Vale of York cup in both form and design is the silver-gilt and nielloed cup from the Halton Moor Hoard, which is only marginally taller (95mm), is similarly decorated with single animals in roundels and has scrolls round the neck and base with W-shaped collars (although of acanthus rather than vines). Although the Halton Moor Hoard was deposited in the mid- to late 1020s, the production of its cup is contemporary with the Vale of York cup and it was manufactured in a Carolingian workshop during Lennartsson’s phase ii (style group vi) dating from 830/40 to c 900, while Wamers suggests c 820–50 and the second quarter of the ninth century for Vale of York.Footnote ³⁶ As the close similarity of their ornament and motifs strongly indicates, both vessels must certainly have been produced in the same workshop, if not even by the same hand, so may have formed either a non-matching pair, or part of a larger set. The cup from the Vale of York possibly represents loot from a church or monastery in the northern Frankish Empire, which was often raided by the Vikings during the ninth century, or else was surrendered as tribute, and the Halton Moor cup may have been taken from such a location in Normandy.Footnote ³⁷ Webster alternatively argues that both of the cups ‘may have come to England not as Viking loot from raids in northern France, but as part of a set of grand altar vessels brought here in the reign of Alfred or his father’.Footnote ³⁸

The cup from Włocławek, which, like the examples from Vale of York and Halton Moor, is decorated with sprigs of acanthus and scenes in roundels round the sides, is closely connected with the Carolingian group, but is somewhat atypical, especially as its four roundels are raised and the scenes depicted on them and in the intervening spaces form a narrative cycle illustrating events from the life of Gideon. Opinions on its dating vary, although they tend to agree on west Frankish manufacture; Lennartsson includes it with the cups from Spain and Halton Moor in her phase ii (style group vi) dated from 830/40 to c 900, and Wamers has opted for a probable mid-ninth-century date; but the tenth century is suggested by Skubiszewski, who would place it probably before the 970s, relating the style of its distinctive narrative scenes to the lid in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.Footnote ³⁹ Form and bossed roundels apart, the Western style of its decoration, which reflects late and post-Carolingian artwork, especially of the tenth century, is quite independent of Oriental models, except for the elements of Sasanian rather than Carolingian-derived acanthus and the surviving head-shaped support for one of its originally two handles. The scenes from the life of Gideon diverge from the middle Byzantine version of the iconography and are probably drawn directly from a Western illuminated manuscript.Footnote ⁴⁰ The representation of human figures further distinguishes the vessel from the main group and may be another indication of a late date, in view of which Skubiszewski now considers it unlikely that it would have served as an eucharistic chalice. He ascribes it to a workshop loosely located in the region between Swabia, Franconia, Saxony and Lotharingia, suggesting that it was probably brought to Poland by a missionary from the West in the late tenth century.

TECHNICAL PARALLELS

The techniques of parcel-gilding and chasing in low relief on the Vale of York and Halton Moor cups are both employed on a sixth- to seventh-century Sasanian silver dish from Klimova (in Perm), which has on the base a striding tigress standing in front of a tree that bears a striking resemblance to the big cat/lioness on the former vessel particularly.Footnote ⁴¹

ORIGINS AND PARALLELS FOR THE ROUNDEL FEATURE

The animals portrayed on the Vale of York cup, especially the lion(s), stag and deer, are so common in early Asian, classical and late antique art that it is difficult to trace directions of influence. The cup’s portrayal of single animals set against a reduced landscape of a single tree, all enclosed by roundels, however, does appear to be sufficiently distinctive to warrant closer investigation, especially in view of the suggestive parallel observed above in slightly earlier Iranian/‘Sasanian’ silverware. As early as the fourth century ad, a horseman is portrayed in a roundel on a tapestry fragment from Egypt and another on a seventh-century Coptic tapestry roundel, while two birds are shown affronted within a more angular roundel on a Coptic version of a Sasanian fabric.Footnote ⁴² In the British Museum there is a Sasanian(?) silver-gilt bowl of the fifth to sixth century decorated with five plain-bordered roundels enclosing male heads from the former North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan (the main part of the recently renamed province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).Footnote ⁴³ The circle appears to have had symbolic importance for the Parthians and Sasanians, appearing as pearl collars and diadems on their coins and textiles, while heraldically arranged creatures in repeating pearl roundels were arguably the most influential in weaving history.Footnote ⁴⁴ Unfamiliar creatures within roundels appeared on figured ‘Sasanian’ silks of around the seventh to ninth centuries and became diffused outside Persia in the eighth and ninth; for example, from Antinoë (in Egypt).Footnote ⁴⁵ A pair of equines (horses or onagers) and a central tree are shown within a roundel on the sixth- to seventh-century Eastern Mediterranean ‘Dancer’ silk at St Maurice and on another without an intervening tree of the late eighth to ninth centuries from Sens, while the ‘heraldic’ pairing of creatures in mirror image is usual on textiles as a device used for ease of weaving.Footnote ⁴⁶ In this later period, rows of large, almost contiguous medallions enclosing animal and human figures were popular with silk weavers.Footnote ⁴⁷

The question of the Asiatic or Byzantine origin of the later textiles has long been controversial, although recent scholarship has again brought the possibility of Eastern-influenced Byzantine manufacture to the fore, as argued earlier by Grabar (see further below).Footnote ⁴⁸ Brøndsted also concluded from the combined evidence of Persian and Egyptian fabrics and Syrian sculptures and mosaics that the disposition of animals in circles derived from the East (Egypt having come under Sasanian dominion in the seventh century), although the inspiration may ultimately have been classical, as reflected in Roman mosaics.Footnote ⁴⁹ Skubiszewski similarly proposed an Oriental origin for the form of the roundel compositions in the later metalwork and further noted the inhabited scrolls of Byzantine mosaics, which may assume the form of roundels, as on a mosaic at Madaba in Jordan where two scroll/roundels enclose a hunter and a tiger(?).Footnote ⁵⁰ Animals standing or lying in front of trees are depicted in medallions inside the bases of Sogdian silver dishes of Marschak’s School B from the later seventh century (for example, from Cherdyn and Volgina, in Perm) and unprovenanced.Footnote ⁵¹ But, single animals shown in cable-bordered roundels (although without trees) round the sides of vessels, as on the Vale of York and Halton Moor cups, appear to be a slightly later development, as on the post-Sasanian eastern Iranian/Central Asian eighth- to ninth-century silver cups with and without handles from the mouth of the Lower Don (but shown lying down) (fig 3) and Azov, and on a lamp of the second half of the eighth century from Turusheva, Kirovskaya obl.Footnote ⁵² It has been suggested that, notwithstanding their iconographic significance, the animal motifs of the Halton Moor cup, the Ada group of manuscripts, the Godescalc Evangelistary (781–3) and several of the animals in the chief manuscripts of the Tours School may be Sasanian in origin, or copied from Oriental carpets.Footnote ⁵³

Fig 3.

Silver handled cup from the mouth of the River Don, Russia. Photograph: author.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE PLANT AND ANIMAL MOTIFS

Stylised trees divide the animals in wild pursuit round the sides of vessels from Perm of Marschak’s School A (with Sasanian roots), produced around the mid-eighth century and earlier in Sogdia, or in Sogdian tradition at Merv.Footnote ⁵⁴ They may represent the sacred ‘Haoma/Hom’ tree of the Persians, which appears on many real or imitated Persian silks at various periods into the Middle Ages.Footnote ⁵⁵ The acanthus leaves on the Vale of York cup replace the lotus-like leaves of these Oriental vessels, while the palmettes between its roundels are foreshadowed by the palmettes in a similar position on the cup from the mouth of the Lower Don and by the plant motifs on the lamp from Turusheva noted above. These foliate motifs may not, however, be purely ornamental, but, like the vine scroll, may also have had a religious significance; the acanthus plants of the Halton Moor cup have been interpreted as symbolising Christ as the ‘Tree-of-Life’.Footnote ⁵⁶

Already in the Sasanian period of the fourth to fifth centuries, animals of different species, such as lions and leopards, were being depicted on a series of metal bowls portraying kings hunting wild beasts on horseback.Footnote ⁵⁷ In addition, tigers, stags and onagers (the latter native to northern Iran) all appear, among other beasts, on Sasanian silver vessels.Footnote ⁵⁸ The variety of animals depicted on the Berlin hunting plate may be intended to suggest not only a game park, but also, at another level, the Sasanian king’s dominion over different territories, if it is accepted that the animals had particular meaning – for example, the lion as a symbol of Iran.Footnote ⁵⁹ Lions are also depicted in royal hunt scenes on Persian silk textiles of c 600/earlier seventh century.Footnote ⁶⁰

In consideration of the parallels for the animals depicted on the Vale of York cup, it seems natural to begin with the lion, as the king of beasts, which also occupies a central position in its group of three (fig 2, R2). For example, a lion is shown attacking a bull on a dish of the end of the seventh/earlier eighth century from Komarovo (in Perm),Footnote ⁶¹ while lions attacking stags are an ancient motif, appearing in both Persian and Achaemenid Greek art, and at some stage they entered Byzantine art, perhaps through classical intermediaries; for example, on ‘Hunter’ silks of the eighth to ninth centuries from Reims and the Caucasus.Footnote ⁶² Lions (or tigers?) are also shown, for example, in two sets attacking other quadrupeds on possibly Sasanian-influenced silks of similar date at Nuremburg and Berlin, while prowling lions appear in roundels on the ninth- to tenth-century Ravenna silk of Byzantine origin.Footnote ⁶³ Parallels can also be observed with Central Asian (Bokharan) and other Byzantine textiles and here the latter appear to have exerted a strong influence on the former from the seventh to tenth centuries.Footnote ⁶⁴

The lioness, or large feline, depicted on the Vale of York cup (fig 2, L2) may similarly be compared with depictions on silverware and textiles. A standing lioness suckling two cubs in front of a tree is shown on an eighth-century silver dish in late Sasanian tradition from Onoshat (in Perm)Footnote ⁶⁵ and a tiger is clearly shown in front of two trees on a late Sasanian/Sogdian gilded and nielloed silver dish of the late seventh to eighth century from Russia.Footnote ⁶⁶ A striding tigress appears on the late Sasanian dish of the sixth to seventh century from Klimova, as noted above, while a striped quadruped, probably also a tiger, is shown on a post-Sasanian dish of the eighth to earlier ninth century from an unknown Russian findspot.Footnote ⁶⁷

Other big cats feature more in textiles; for example, leopards in pairs on Persian silks of c 600/earlier seventh century, and panthers being attacked by dogs occur on the possibly Byzantine Milan silk of the seventh to eighth century.Footnote ⁶⁸ It appears, however, that the large feline shown without stripes or spots on the Vale of York cup depicts a lioness paired with its mate in the corresponding opposite roundel.

The motif of stags being attacked by lions has been noted above (cf fig 2, L3), while a stag is depicted alone in front of a tree on the basal medallion of a lost small Sasanian silver bowl from either Volgina or Rozhdestvenskoye (in Perm).Footnote ⁶⁹

The equine in the opposed roundel on Vale of York (fig 2, R2) is likely to be a wild ass or onager, as suggested above. The attachment plates of most Sasanian ewer handles take the form of onager heads and a king lassoes an onager on a silver-gilt plate from Nizhni Novgorod.Footnote ⁷⁰ An onager, or perhaps a horse, is depicted in front of a tree on the basal medallion of a Byzantine silver-gilt dish from Sludka (in Kama, Russia), with a control stamp of Justinian i (527–65), which may have been produced in Constantinople, or perhaps Egypt, and resembles certain Sasanian vessels in the style of its composition.Footnote ⁷¹ In Byzantine textiles, onagers are shown under attack by lions on the eighth-/ninth-century Milan ‘Hunter’ silk, and a Byzantine copy of a Sasanian/Persian subject shows a king miraculously killing both a lion and an onager with a single arrow.Footnote ⁷² Horses do seem to be shown on Eastern Mediterranean textiles of the sixth to seventh centuries (for example, drinking at a trough in a pastoral scene on a silk at St Maurice) and a pair of either horses or onagers occur with a central tree motif in a roundel on the ‘Dancer’ silk there.Footnote ⁷³ But in Central Asian silverware, horses are usually with riders, or just saddled or grazing, rather than simply displayed alone.Footnote ⁷⁴ The identification of the pair of back-to-back deer-like creatures at the centre of the composition of the Vale of York cup is more problematic (fig 2, R1 and L1). The one on the right (R1) has two pointed ears and cloven hoofs, so probably represents a hornless hind, but the animal on the left (L1) may represent a deer, an antelope or possibly even a unicorn. It is a little unclear whether it is shown with one pointed ear springing from the forehead at the front of the head and the other with a rounded tip at the back, because the metal is damaged at the end of the latter ‘ear’, although it does appear to be rounded in the X-radiograph. The animal may be compared with the stag, which is shown with one pointed and one more rounded ear, and all the other animals are shown with both ears. On first impression, therefore, the animal may be identified as a second deer, pairing with the first. On the other hand, it might be suggested that the pointed frontward ‘ear’ is meant to indicate a horn – unless it is shown in profile view with a second horn hidden behind the first, in the same way as only one of the stag’s antlers is shown. If the animal is to be understood as having two horns, it might alternatively represent an antelope, but, if a single-horned creature is indeed intended, it may represent a unicorn (or monoceros).

ORIGINS AND PARALLELS FOR THE ANIMAL MOTIFS

It would thus appear from the above parallels, and from Brøndsted’s study of early medieval animal ornament between the seventh to eleventh centuries, that the animals of the Vale of York and Halton Moor cups are based on Oriental models. The theme of the chase depicted on the former, however, probably derives ultimately from late Roman art, including mosaics and marble furniture, although the exact contribution of antique tradition is difficult to define.Footnote ⁷⁵ For example, chase and hunt scenes, which are common to both sacred and profane symbolism, are frequently sculpted on marble table tops produced in the Eastern Mediterranean around the late fourth and early fifth century, such as one from Hama, Syria.Footnote ⁷⁶ The theme is further illustrated by the hunt scenes on Roman silverware, which may include a human element – for example, around the bowl from the Traprain Treasure (in Scotland), on which three groups of wild animals pursue each other, separated by two human heads.Footnote ⁷⁷ The animal conflicts in Oriental art, however, tend to concentrate more on the physical struggle between the beast of prey and its victim than on the chase. As with the vine scroll, the animal motifs and their arrangement, too, would appear to represent a subtle amalgam of stylistic influences from both Oriental (particularly Sassanian and Persian) sources and from late classical art.Footnote ⁷⁸

TREE AND ANIMAL COMPOSITIONS

The distinctive superimposition of single beasts on trees placed centrally behind them, as shown on the Vale of York and Halton Moor cups, echoes an ancient form of composition that may perhaps be traced back to Roman mosaics; for example, the boar, bear and elephant in front of trees in the radiating compartments on the Orpheus mosaic from Horkstow, or the stag, lion, leopard, tigress(?), hound(?), horse or griffin, elephant and boar in similar compartments on another Orpheus mosaic from Winterton villa, both in north Lincolnshire and dated to the mid-fourth century ad.Footnote ⁷⁹ As the depictions of elephants most clearly show, the designs appear to have been taken from copybooks of Mediterranean origin. The placement creates a reduced landscape effect of animal and tree within a unified space, as observed with regard to Sasanian representations, too.Footnote ⁸⁰ Stags and deer are shown also in scenes in front of a tree or trees, which may have a Christian explanation, in the lateral rectangular panels and three of the lunettes on the Hinton St Mary pavement, although in this case being pursued by hounds.Footnote ⁸¹ The late fifth-/early sixth-century mosaic of Leontius at the villa of Awzaʿi (in Lebanon) depicts a leaping lion and bull, each in front of a tree.Footnote ⁸² Similar compositions appear to occur contemporarily, or slightly later, in metalwork. Lions and leopards pursue and attack stags, rams, etc in front of stylised palm trees around the sides of the late Roman bowl from Traprain Law, mentioned above. A grazing equine is depicted in front of a tree on the basal roundel of the dish from Sludka (in Perm, Russia) (also mentioned above). The control stamp of Justinian i on the dish indicates an Eastern Mediterranean origin for the motif, whether Constantinople, or Egypt. A single running quadruped is portrayed in front of a tree on the base of a late seventh-century Sogdian dish of unknown provenance and inside the bases of slightly later silver Sasanian dishes and Iranian silverware of the eighth to earlier ninth centuries (for example, a tiger in front of a tree and facing a bush with lotus-like leaves or flowers, a tigress in front of a tree facing a bush, or stags in front of trees).Footnote ⁸³ There is a lioness and cubs in front of a tree on the dish from Onoshat and the lion savaging a bull in front of a tree on the dish from Komarovo (see above). A tiger is depicted in front of two trees on a late seventh-/eighth-century, possibly Sogdian, silver-gilt and nielloed dish in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.Footnote ⁸⁴

On silks of the seventh to eighth centuries of Muthesius’s Zandaniji group 1, lions and rams are shown for technical reasons in facing pairs with trees between them rather than behind (as noted above) – for example, from Huy and Nancy – while facing pairs of equines, but without intervening trees, occur on silks of Zandaniji group 2 of the late eighth to ninth centuries – for example, from Sens.Footnote ⁸⁵

ORIGINS AND PARALLELS FOR THE VINE SCROLLS AND CORDONS

Antecedents for the vine scrolls in friezes round the necks and bases of the Vale of York and Halton Moor cups can be found in the vine-shoot or acanthus-like palmette friezes found around the necks of eastern Iranian/Central Asian cups such as the example from the mouth of the Lower Don noted above.Footnote ⁸⁶ But its specific form in Carolingian art, particularly in metalwork, has been derived by Wamers from northern English decoration of the late seventh to eighth century, which was taken to the Continent by the Insular mission.Footnote ⁸⁷ In a way similar to that by which the vine scroll became blended with the acanthus, it may have been further strongly influenced by the regularised vine scrolls of a type developed in the Eastern Mediterranean region, which is ultimately of late classical origin, although conventionalised by the Eastern sense of style, according to Brøndsted.Footnote ⁸⁸ The connecting collars of the vine scrolls on the Vale of York cup clearly relate them to the vine scrolls of other Carolingian artwork, while those on the cup from Spain have been compared with examples in manuscripts and ivories produced at the School of Metz.Footnote ⁸⁹

The Vale of York cup’s plain cordon above the scroll around the neck and the broader, cabled cordon beneath it have been compared with the cordons around the neck of the late eighth-/ninth-century cup no. 19 from the Sânnicolau Mare/Nagyszentmiklós Hoard and the more or less contemporary example from the Halton Moor Hoard.Footnote ⁹⁰ Similar cordons appear, too, on Oriental vessels.

THE TRANSMISSION OF ARTISTIC MOTIFS FROM THE EAST

Scenes from classical Greek and Roman myths occur in repoussé on certain Iranian silver bowls, which raises the question of whether there was direct Central Asian–Mediterranean contact in late antiquity, or whether the Mediterranean secular elements had already been imported in the Hellenistic, or earlier Roman, period and merely evolved locally in Central Asia, subject to local interpretation and revival of native tradition. Mango concludes that it appears that Mediterranean silver entered Central Asia after the second to third century, during and/or after the fourth century, and it is more likely that the decorative influences were initially from the West to the East, especially as there is only one Sasanian silver plate known from the Roman Empire. As she further observes, it is difficult to imagine the separate, parallel and simultaneous developments of so many features in both West and East.Footnote ⁹¹

Byzantine silver reached Central Asia either by a northern route via the steppe, or via Persia acting as a ‘middleman’; or else by a largely dismissed or neglected southern route to India and Ceylon. Egypt or Nubia may have bridged the gap between Mediterranean and Oriental silver down to the seventh century and into the Islamic era.Footnote ⁹² Byzantine plates with crosses at the centre could have appealed to Nestorian merchants, who carried their version of Christianity from Iran to Middle and Central Asia, then on to China.Footnote ⁹³ One Central Asian imitation of late antique silverware appears to have been traded as far as China; a ewer from Guyuan, from the tomb of a general who died in 569, suggesting direct East Roman–Central Asian contact in the sixth century, possibly in connection with the silk trade.Footnote ⁹⁴ Jewish merchants, called radhaniyyah in Arabic sources, travelled from the Eastern Mediterranean as far as China – either via India or via Khazar lands across the Caspian to Transoxiana and onwards – probably as much as several centuries before they were first documented c 850, or a little earlier when known as the Radhanites.Footnote ⁹⁵ International trade and other contacts, such as diplomatic gifts between the Roman/Byzantine Empire and contemporary Oriental civilisations, should also be considered, while it is on record that Sasanian silks were captured by the Byzantines in 628.Footnote ⁹⁶

Silverware may, therefore, have been used as an export currency by silk merchants; for example, some two dozen pieces of mostly date-stamped Byzantine silver plate of the sixth to seventh century have been found in the Kama region north of the Volga, having originally travelled from the Empire to Central Asia before being taken farther on to Northern Russia in the ninth to tenth century.Footnote ⁹⁷ Two of them have Central Asian (Sogdian or Choresmian) names scratched onto them. During the sixth to early seventh centuries, Persian silver vessels, too, as well as Persian and Byzantine silver coins, reached the Vyatka-Kama region through trade rather than through non-commercial activities, with the Khazars acting as intermediaries between the Vikings, Finno-Ugrians and the Islamic world in the ninth to tenth centuries.Footnote ⁹⁸ Noonan connects most of the silver finds from the Kama–Urals with the Fur Route from the north to Central Asia, which most probably existed before the mid-sixth century and entered a new period when West Turkish overlords and Sogdian traders sought to expand the markets for the silk they had obtained.Footnote ⁹⁹ He sees this as leading to active commerce with Byzantium and making available in Sogdia and Kwarezm the three groups of Byzantine, Sasanian/Iranian and Central Asian silver vessels for export to the north, although the main share of the eastern vessels does not appear to have reached the Ural region until after 800.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The trade in silver is likely to have been favoured by the Abbasid dynasty’s ousting of the Omayyads around 750, followed by the transfer of the capital eastwards from Damascus to Baghdad.

Motifs of Sasanian origin appear to have continued in metalwork for a while after the final Arab defeat of the Sasanian Empire in the mid-seventh century, making them difficult to date precisely, but possibly at least as late as the ninth century, while members of the nobility may have continued to patronise imitations of royal Sasanian plates free from the influences of the conquerors.Footnote ¹⁰¹ In textiles, too (as well as jewellery, ceramics and historiated glassware), the Sasanian royal tradition appears probably to have continued some while after the Islamic conquest, the Arabs taking over Sasanian textile factories and continuing to produce the customary repertoire in Sogdia, itself conquered in the earlier half of the eighth century (Transoxiana, now Tajikistan/eastern Uzbekistan) with Samarkand falling in 712.Footnote ¹⁰² As noted above, the animals of the Halton Moor cup may be Sasanian in origin, copied from Oriental carpets.Footnote ¹⁰³

The ornamental motifs of Iranian and Central Asian metalwork and other luxury goods were widely disseminated in Asia and eastern Europe between the eighth to tenth centuries. They can be paralleled by the designs employed in Byzantine and Central Asian silk weaving, which clearly show mutual influences at work in spite of commercial competition, although the limited survival of the evidence makes it more difficult to identify the direction of flow. There is debate among specialists whether any surviving silks can be identified as specifically Sasanian, although later versions prove the popularity of their style.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ For example, the hunter motifs of Byzantine textiles may be based on putative Sasanian prototypes and Sasanian patterns and motifs may have entered the repertoire of Byzantine weavers during the sixth to seventh centuries, when there were significant contacts between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Sasanian textiles in the early Middle Ages became a model for the rest of the known world, and materials with animal motifs, generally shown singly, are the most common of all surviving Sasanian textiles.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ It seems possible, though, that these weavers looked also to classical motifs and only incorporated Sasanian elements where so desired. In the early ninth century, after the Arab invasions, their choice may also have been influenced by gifts of textiles from the Abbasid rulers to envoys, and the exchange of technical ideas and iconographic themes seems to have continued with little control between the imperial workshops of Constantinople and their counterparts in Central Asia and the rest of the Islamic world.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ There is compelling documentary evidence, too, for quite extensive trade, including textiles such as silks, purples and brocades, between the ‘Dar al-Islam’ and Carolingian Europe.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

Imperial purple silks that reached the West, where they survive mainly in ecclesiastical treasuries, are likely to have been diplomatic and papal gifts made during the period of close contacts between the Byzantine and German emperors from the eighth to twelfth centuries. Such textiles were then presented in turn by those rulers to churches (for example, the eighth-century hunter silk from Mozac with undoubted Sasanian features such as ribbons tied to the tail of the horse).Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The quantities of Byzantine and other Oriental textiles (pallia sirica and ‘Persian silks’) that were imported were huge, according to the surviving inventories and other documentary sources such as the Liber Pontificalis.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ These textiles clearly served as models for the decoration of Carolingian and Ottonian manuscripts, while in the medieval period they influenced other media such as wall-painting, mosaics, metalwork and sculpture.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Vikan suggests that Sasanian and early Islamic motifs reached Italy by way of Byzantium.Footnote ¹¹¹ Commerce may also have played some role. The Jewish Radhanite merchants noted above, for example, established social and cultural relations between Central Europe and Kievan Rus’ and the lands of the Khazars in the Lower Don and Volga, who controlled the trade between Rus’ and the Arab caliphate. Beginning in the mid-ninth century, trading became extensive directly between Carolingian Regensburg and Atil (or Itil), the third capital of Khazaria, rather than via Byzantium.Footnote ¹¹² Farther to the north, the important medieval trade ‘road’ of the Via Regia connected Kiev to the Carolingian centre at Erfurt, as underlined for the ninth century by a stream of Islamic dirhams.Footnote ¹¹³ It thence linked onwards to Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and Mainz-Kastel, before branching westwards into France and the Low Countries.

From the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth, the direction of influence as observed in the metalwork was reversed from the East to the West.Footnote ¹¹⁴ It seems likely that the loose network of trade routes known as the ‘Silk Road’, stretching from Constantinople to Syria, would have played an important role in this shift, dominated as it was until the tenth century by the silverware-producing centre of Sogdiana.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Oriental artists and refugees from the Arab invasions working in ‘Syrian’ colonies in France and Italy, whose number was swollen by iconoclastic strife in Byzantine lands between 725–847, may even have produced textiles and small industrial art goods.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Secular Byzantine silverware may have been used as an export currency connected with the silk trade (supra) and, in a similar way, Central Asian models for the Carolingian pyxes could later have been conveyed to the West.

Thus, although classical parallels to the decoration and Byzantine parallels to the form of the Vale of York cup have been remarked above, they are somewhat too early to be regarded as its direct models. It is above all the combination of form, technique and decoration that must be considered as parts of the whole picture, and it is in the chronologically closer Sasanian silverware that all these elements are brought together: the form, parcel-gilding and animals in front of trees within cabled roundels separated by plant motifs.