An Ivory Sistrum from Benin

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Source: The British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 1963), p. 60
Published by: British Museum
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4422818 .
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copies have been broken up by booksellersfor

sale of the sheets separately. No copy is
known in any other English collection, and in
1936 four copies only were recorded in
Scottish libraries.

A GOLD FEMALE

FIGURE

THE Department of Oriental Antiquities

has recently acquired a gold female figure
with a child clinging to her skirt and holding
a bunch of grapes, probablyrepresentingthe
Indian goddess of good fortune (Sri). It was
found some fifty years ago in the N.W.F.
Province of Pakistan. It resembles in style
three gold brooches decorated in relief from
the first-century-A.D.Parthian city of Sirkap
(Taxila) in West Pakistan. This piece, however, in full round, seems to have formed the
finial of a woman's hair-pin. Its style, though
reflecting the phil-Hellenism of Parthian
Iran, has a truly Indian feel. It is a notable
addition to the Museum's collection of Gandhara art, which already contains the finest
known example of goldwork of this period
in the Bimaran Reliquary. The gold finial,
of first- to second-century-A.D. date, was
purchasedthrough the Brooke Sewell Fund.

(P1. xxIv.)
AN IVORY

SISTRUM
BENIN

FROM

THE Department of Ethnography has received its most important single acquisition
for very many years in the form of a magnificent ivory double gong or sistrum from

Benin in Western Nigeria, which has been

presented by Mrs. Margaret Webster Plass
of Philadelphia, an outstandingly generous
benefactorof the Department since the death
of her husband, the well-known collector of
African art, in 1952. The gong is the finest
of five known examples which are believed
to have been carved in the sixteenth century
for the kings of Benin, to be struck with
ivory wands in ceremonies of the divine
kingship. It was collected in 1897 by the late
Admiral SirGeorge Leclerc Egerton, secondin-command of the British Expedition to
Benin.
The Department has also been given an
importantcollection of Malay silver work by
Mrs. Beatrice Satow, in memory of her
husband. This collection well illustrates the
technique of the Malayan silversmith and
the quality of his product. Bowls, dishes, and
boxes are generally made from thin sheet
silver or silver alloy, solderedwhere necessary
and decorated by the repouss6 technique
supplemented by work with a tracer and
graver; i.e. a relief pattern is applied with
punches, mainly from the back, and finished
with punches and engraving tools on the
front. Belt buckles are generally of heavier
metal, and are sometimes decorated with
niello (a form of black and grey enamel). The
patterns are generally floral or geometrical,
representation of human or animal forms
being forbidden by Moslem law. When
articles bear inscriptions these are often in
Malay written in Arabic characters; but
meaninglessinscriptionsfor purely decorative
purposesare not uncommon.

6o

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