Ceremonial plate, 10th-11th century.

 

 

The Middle Ages

 

The art of engraving in antiquity and the early Middle Ages is principally represented by gilded silver crockery and, less frequently, works in gold. Starting from the 11th century in Central Asia and the Near and Middle East, the metals most often used were copper and its alloys.

 

The fasteners or bronze brooches embellished with zoomorphic designs, and sometimes little genre scenes, widely used at the end of the 3rd through the beginning of the 2nd millennium in the regions of the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India, were still very much influenced by the ancient Oriental civilisations.

 

The works from the 6th through 4th centuries BCE were closely linked with the “animal style” of the Sakas and the Scythians, of which the appearance was particularly important in the north and east of Central Asia. The numerous objects made of bronze in those days were embellished with supernatural and true to life animal representations and hunting scenes with wild animals. This particular style often came from the artist’s desire to depict the animal, by generalising its shape and stripping it of all unnecessary details. This terseness gave the works an astonishing artistic integrity.

 

The animal figurines edging ritual cauldrons, embellishing altars, censers, and pommels of daggers or the images in relief with an openwork design of griffins, ibexes, horses on plates, buckles, and other ornamental pieces prove that to us.

 

 

The art of engraving of Tokharistan

 

The art of engraving of Tokharistan is profoundly influenced by the traditions of Hellenistic art, particularly valued by the Bactrian craftsmen from the days before the Kushans. A silver ceremonial vase embellished with a large frieze in relief, on which scenes of a drama by Euripides take place, is the best example of this school. The characters are essentially represented in a Greek iconography: they are naked or dressed in light tunics, the proportions of their bodies are classical.

 

However, the Greek queen Alopé, placed between two talking shepherds, reminds us more or less the goddess of the Kushans, Ordokhcho. The hairstyles and costumes of certain characters are equally of the Bactrian type.