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Temple Pendant (kolt)
Reverse and obverse
Late 4th-5th century
Gold, garnets
H 6.1 cm, l 8.6 cm, wt 75.45 g
Volgograd Province, village of Verkhne-Kurmoyarskaya
This kolt consists of a roughly circular plate of gold
with short tubular rays spreading from the disk. On the
obverse the disk is divided by a filigree ornament of
two parallel twisted wires into two sections, a segment
and an oval. The segment contains three settings for
inlays; the oval has seven garnets in their settings,
surrounded by granulations. The space between the
stones is filled with triangles composed of granulations.
The disk is edged with a narrow band of metal soldered
on edgewise and to this are attached the ‘rays'. The
‘rays' have spherical terminals decorated with minute
pyramids of granulations. The reverse of the kolt is
decorated with a religious subject: the Tree of Life with
a bird on top and ibexes on each side of it. All the
figures are depicted using granulations. Attached to a
gold diadem, such kolts formed a part of a woman's
headdress.
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