Page 16 - Met Museum Ghandara Incense Burner

Figure 29. Relief on the interior of the lid of a shell-shaped
Figure 27. Incense burner. Egypt, 1st century a. d. Bronze, box. Tarentum, Italy, Hellenistic. Silver, diam. 4 cm. Museo
H. 24.8 cm. Collection of Lewis M. Dubroff (photo: courtesy Archeologico Nazionale, Taranto (photo: Henri-Paul Franc-
du Gandhara [Paris, 1979], pl. 19a)
Sotheby's) fort, Les palettes

form easily understood as the Indian pipal, which
appears on the lid of the Gandharan burner (see
Figure 9). We shall show other, similar Greek-style
burners which have been discovered in or are
believed to have come from places in proximity to
the sea route to India.
As one would expect from reading the Periplus,
Egypt was the best source for objects which were sent
to India. Two incense burners from Tuch el-Karamus
in Egypt are related to the Gandharan burner in that
they have fluted stems, albeit much heavier in form.
The first of the two (Figure 24) is of the same type as
Greek
the Levy-White example (Figure 23), with four
winged figures on the base.67 The major difference is
that the base of the Egyptian
burner is rounded rather
than square, and a lid pierced to look like basketry
has
been found to go with it (Figure 25). On the flat top
of the handle of the Tuch el-Karamus lid sat a hen
(or rooster?) which is no longer attached but can be
seen in the reconstruction (Figure 26). A late Gand-
haran version of this vessel that looks like an
inverted Chinese bowl was excavated at Taxila.68
The lid is similar, but the basketry has become an
inverted lotus, and the four winged figures which
support the base have been transformed into ele-
phants. Another incense burner, from the collection
of Lewis Dubroff (Figure 27), is said to be from
Figure 28. Incense burner. Tarentum, Italy, 3rd century B.C. and was in Roman times. Here one
Silver. Collection of Edmond de Rothschild (photo: Michael Egypt produced
Pfrommer, Studien zu alexandrinischer und grossgriechischer can see, at a later date, the tenacity of the tapering
Toreutik Zeit [Berlin, 1987], pl. 32) fluted column with a torus base on a square plinth.
fruhhellenistischer
84