Byzantine Temple Pendants
Temple pendants are thought to have hung near the temple or cheek, suspended from the wearer’s hair or headdress. The pendant’s hollow interior probably held a piece of perfumed cloth. A small stick would have been used to guide the cloth in and out of the pendant. When Kievan Rus, a powerful new state to the north of the Byzantine Empire, accepted Christianity as its official religion in 988, the aristocracy also adopted the manners and dress of the Byzantine court. Local artists soon produced their own versions of Constatinopolitan fashions. Temple pendants of precious metals worked in cloisonné enamel or niello are local variants of the more intricately detailed works made for the Byzantine court. As in Byzantium, temple pendants may have been worn next to the face by both the men and the women of Rus. The works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were perhaps buried by their owners when the Mongol armies under Batu Khan sacked Kiev in 1240. In her paper "Temple Pendants' in ...