Abundance & The Good Life:

The Late-Antique Inheritance (cat. 1-11)

5 Quadrangular Weight with Hunting Scene Bronze with silver inlay Late-Antique, Constantinople (?) Late 4th - early 5th century AD Height: 1 7/8 inches (4.7 cm.) Private Collection

This weight, with Greek symbols designating its heft at six ounces (actual weight is 5.5 ounces), is engraved with two men on horseback engaged in a hunt. Heads and arms are inlaid with silver in a manner similar to our chariot fitting (cat. 1). Because this and the other weights catalogued below most likely originate in Constantinople, they provide evidence for the Eastern practice of colorful metal-on-metal inlays even though most of the more ambitious pieces (cat. 1) appear to be Western.

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