The Warrior on Claps from Tillya Tepe

Abstract

Among the objects excavated in 1978 at the site of Tillya Tepe (Northern Afghanistan) by the Soviet-Afghan archaeological expedition led by Victor I. Sarianidi, the twin golden clasps from Burial III attract special and instant attention of any military historian or a researcher of ancient arms and armour. The identity of the personage(-s) on the Tillya Tepe clasps has quite rarely been studied. Scholars are usually satisfied with a generic term a “warrior”. Kazim Abdullaev has identified the personage as Ares-Alexander. Jeannine Davis-Kimball has identified the personage as Enaree, the castrated priest of one of the epiphanies of Great Goddess. Patryk Skupniewicz supported the latter identification associating the personages from Tillya Tepe clasps with the North Indian, mainly Gandharan iconography of Skanda Kartikeya who, as a war-god, was an Indian equivalent of Ares. This article establishes the correspondence between the images on Tillya Tepe clasps with the representations of enthroned and armed goddesses which are quite common in the iconography related to the discussed clasps. The armed and enthroned goddess has been identified as the Iranian goddess Arshtat on Kushan coins. The warrior depicted on the golden clasps from Tillya Tepe should be interpreted as a portrayal of Arshtat, whose image was borrowed from the iconography of Athena. The goddess is shown seated on the throne with griffin-shaped legs known already in the Achaemenid times in the pose developed in the images in the late Hellenistic period, which is in line with the date of the entire site.