Running Animals Belt (c. 1000 BCE): Art, History and Details

Running Animals Belt (c. 1000 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The design is one of running and leaping animals "drawn" with an elegance, vigor, and power reminiscent of those cultures who have lived most closely with wild animals and therefore appreciated them best, such as, for one example, the Neolithic cave painters of Lascaux. The animal figures on the belt are not actually drawn, but are punched with an extremely fine punch tool in very carefully planned lines that actually look as though they are drawn. This was a technique used in about 1000 BC.

Object facts

• Title: Running Animals Belt
• Date: c. 1000 BCE
• Culture: Caucasus, Russia or Turkey, Koban culture
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze, hammered and incised
• Dimensions: Overall: 7.6 x 67.6 x 1.2 cm (3 x 26 5/8 x 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Near Eastern Art
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1988.71

A detail from the museum

The Scythians arose from nomadic tribes that wandered from the steppes to eastern Europe; the greatest numbers of finds related to them have come from the areas around the Black Sea.

Collection credit

In honor of Kathleen B. Sherwin

Further reading listed by the museum

• “The Year in Review for 1988.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 2 (February 1989): 30–75.
• Kozloff, Arielle, and Nino Urushadze. "Animal Style Bronze Art and Its Closest Parallels: A Bronze Belt and Axe Head." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 5 (1994): 118-39.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.