Authentic Roman Patera Handle Dagger w/Ancient Luristan Blade Ex-Artemis Gallery For Sale

Western Asia, Luristan, ca. 1200 to 700 BCE; Roman, Imperial, ca. 1st to 3rd century CE. TA composite dagger of genuinely ancient components, its Roman patera handle and Iranian Iron Age blade separated by a millennium and united by a later hand. The handle is cast leaded bronze, its cylindrical shaft articulated by crisp vertical fluting and surmounted by a ram-head finial with curved horns and protruding ears, the eyes perhaps once set with silver inlays. The ram was the sacrificial animal of Roman ritual, and patera handles of this type were the instruments by which wine, milk, or blood was poured in offering, making the iconography and function inseparable. Handles of this form are documented from the Augustan-Tiberian period through the 3rd century CE, with examples recorded across the northwestern provinces of the Empire. XRF analysis of the bulk alloy confirms a leaded tin bronze with trace silver and antimony, consistent with Iberian copper sources and squarely within the published range for cast Roman bronzes. Size of blade: 10.1\" L x 1.5\" W (25.7 cm L x 3.8 cm W); of dagger: 14.75\" L x 2.5\" W (37.5 cm L x 6.3 cm W)

The blade is older by the better part of a thousand years. Cast from a high-tin binary bronze in the variable manner characteristic of Iron Age western Iran, it tapers to a firm point through a long double-edged profile consistent with Luristan dagger forms of ca. 1200 to 700 BCE. The dense malachite and cuprite corrosion is consistent with genuine antiquity. The join between blade and handle, where the Iranian tang was pressed into the Roman attachment socket, is the work of a later restorer, probably operating in the 19th or early 20th century European or Levantine trade. Both components are authenticated by XRF analysis and offered here as genuinely ancient within their respective traditions.

Provenance: private Birchwood, Wisconsin, USA collection