Iron Age III gold cuirass fragments from Northwestern Iran, 8th-7th centuries BCE
In 2015, I had the opportunity to photograph artifacts in the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery of Asian Art. In it, I found this spectacular fragment of a gold breastplate dating to the Iron Age III period. Other fragments of this breastplate are today in the Cincinnati Art Museum and in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Fragments from a second gold breastplate found in the burial mound near the village of Ziwiye are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in the National Museum in Teheran. "This is a fragment from the lower part of a much larger pectoral, or breastplate, made of sheet metal and embellished with figures and ornament arranged in horizontal bands. A breastplate shielded the chest from arrows or other weapons. The decoration on this example consists of mythical guardian creatures, whose images were believed to provide magical protection for the wearer." "A pectoral made of thin sheet gold, like this one, would have been attached to a sturdier material, p...