Salvete Omnes,
MET is greatly 'stuffed' with art and artefacts.
In the past I presented various surviving ancient bit from the MET and other museum collections.
Well, a couple days ago i had a chance to look at some Thracian bit reconstruction in combination with a headstall done by a Romanian author and artist Radu Oltean - here Radu's books are listed - goodreads .
So following me studying his reconstructions in his book on the Getae and Dacians, I looked up various Thracian bits in the MET collection.
Therefore today I would like to bring to your attention another MET example of these early ancient curb-bits (I wrote about two - here and here):
this bit - dated to II-I centuries BC, is made out of bronze somewhere in the Balkans.
height - 15,2 cm
width (of the mouthpiece? )- 14cm
weight - 462,1 g
The mouthpiece looks more or less like a jointed-snaffle one, but instead of rings where reins would be attached etc there are two longish shanks attached to the mouthpiece by another small ring, and instead of a curb-chain there is a horizontal 'curb-bar,' with three available positions for the bar. Above the mouthpiece there is a large 'lyre-shaped' cheekpiece on each side of the mouthpiece, although not part of a shank, but once attached to the headstall it could have acted in unison with the shank.
I think the bit is beautiful, the workmanship of the smith who made it quite exquisite and precise, and somewhat flowing.
The bronze used to make the mouthpiece in the horses mouth could have tasted sweet to the horse and thus caused the horse's mouth to stay 'wet' and 'pliable.'
A great example of the beauty of ancient horsemanship and blacksmith art I daresay.
ps
you can also peruse this article about the ancient curb-bits, I made it available in 2017.
Valete
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