Woman and Water Buffalo Rhyton (500–700): Art, History and Details

Woman and Water Buffalo Rhyton (500–700) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Recalling both Greek and Iranian traditions of head vases and rhyta (drinking horns), this unusual silver vessel combines the heads of a woman and a water buffalo. A filling hole on top and a pouring or drinking spout in front make clear its function. An inscription in Middle Persian on its back records its weight: probably 50 staters and three drachmae (close to its current weight of just over 700 grams, or about 1-1/2 pounds). The woman’s flat brow, straight nose, and widely set, heavy-lidded eyes—along with the sectarian mark in gold on her forehead—relate to art of the Indus River Valley and Hindu Kush regions of today’s Pakistan and Afghanistan. While we do not know for sure, numerous scholars have suggested that she may depict the Indian warrior goddess Durga, slayer of the buffalo demon.

Object facts

• Title: Woman and Water Buffalo Rhyton
• Date: 500–700
• Culture: Sasanian, Iran, 600s or Turk Shahi dynasty, Kabul, Afghanistan, 500s
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: silver, with mercury gilding and glass inlays
• Dimensions: Overall: 19.1 cm (7 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Near Eastern Art
• Department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
• Accession number: 1964.96

A detail from the museum

Inlays once filled the buffalo eye sockets, perhaps of colored glass like that still present within some petals of the disc-shaped earrings.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Frank Chalton Francis. Fiftieth Anniversary Banquet: The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel, June 13, 1966. [Cleveland]: [The Museum], 1966.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Golden Anniversary Acquisition,” 1966, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

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.