Two Lead Plaques with a Depiction of a Danubian Horseman from the Collection of the National Museum of the History of the Ukraine

Abstract

the collector Platonov presented some of the items in his collection to the National Museum of the Ukraine: among these were the two lead plaques which are the subject of this article. They belong to one and the same type of small rectangular reliefs with a semi-circular aedicula, in which multi-figure compositions are arranged in four horizontal registers.Lead plaques of this kind with relief depictions have on several occasions been the subject of special studies. 1 A corpus of monuments associated with the cult of the Danubian horseman and published by Tudor 2 treats such plaques. This work remains to this day the most important source of information on lead plaques: it examines the iconography of the artefacts and the ideology of the cult 3 and also discusses the symbols on the reliefs. 4 It should also be noted that after the publication of the corpus by Tudor, new finds of lead plaques from the territory of Yugoslavia and Austria were published as well as others not previously recorded, which are held in the museums of those two countries. 5 The latest attempt to classify lead plates was undertaken quite recently by Ertl. 6 The lead plaques published here are classified by two types: l) to the Type B(d) according to Tudor's classification which links together rectangular plaques with a depiction of two riders and a goddess or with figures represented in the * The description of the plates and the determination of the possible context for their discovery were maid by V.M. Zubar and L.V. Strokova; the attribution is the work of M.Yu. Treister.