Getty Museum

Hemispherical Cup with Stone Inlays

Date

1st century B.C.

Medium

Gilt silver, garnets, and glass

Culture

Near Eastern (Parthian)

Department

Vessels

Institution

Getty Museum

Gilded garlands of leaves adorned with sets of inlaid garnets decorate the exterior of this hemispherical cup. At some point in the cup's history, two of the garnets were lost and replaced with greenish glass inlays. A gilded relief rosette with a garnet center decorates the bottom of the exterior. The cup was probably made in present-day northeastern Iran during the first century B.C. The region had been part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire until it was conquered by Alexander the Great. After his death in 323 B.C., the Hellenistic Greek Seleucid dynasty, whose kingdom stretched from Turkey to Afghanistan, ruled the area. In the later third century B.C., however, a group of semi-nomadic people from the steppes of south central Asia called the Parthians began challenging the weakened Seleucid authority in the eastern part of their territory. By the first century B.C., the Parthians ruled the area. This complicated political history left its legacy on the local material culture. Hemispherical cups with a rosette in the center were a popular form in Achaemenid Persian art, while the garland design derives from Seleucid motifs. The use of both these elements on a cup produced under Parthian rule in the first century B.C. demonstrates the long life of visual and cultural traditions in this region.

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