Two West Phoenician bronze horse bits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York): On the function and iconography of the so-called Bronze Carriazo

Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, exhibits two bronze plaques which reproduce the iconography of the famous Spanish item known as 'Bronce Carriazo'. They are considered as lateral cheeks of a horse bridle bit cast by a West Phoenician workshop around the 7th century bc. They present some iconographic and, above all, technical differences with the Sevillian piece. These horse harness pieces represent the goddess qudšu 'ǎtart, a winged warrior divinity linked to the Phoenician royalty. The two heads of birds at the upper edges seem to configure the bow and the stern of a solar boat (the sun itself is symbolized in a central rosette). It would be the solar ship that sails through a water sky, depicting the trip to the otherworld in the extreme West. These Hispanic-Phoenician bronzes are inspired by the oriental repertoires and they reflect the assumption of a mythical and religious ideology, strongly rooted in Orient, by the western Iberian aristocracies throughout the Early Iron Age.

En el Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, se conservan dos placas de bronce que reproducen la iconografía del célebre Bronce Carriazo. Se consideran camas laterales de un bocado de caballo elaborado por un taller fenicio occidental en torno al s. vii a. C., y presentan algunas diferencias iconográficas y, sobre todo, técnicas, con la conocida pieza sevillana. Los bocados representan a la diosa qudšu ’aštart, una divinidad alada guerrera vinculada a la realeza fenicia. Las dos cabezas de ánades a ambos extremos parecen formar la proa y la popa de una barca solar, con el sol simbolizado en una roseta central, pues el barco solar realizaba el viaje al más allá en el extremo Occidente, navegando por un cielo de agua. Estas producciones de bronces hispano-fenicios, inspiradas en los repertorios orientales, reflejan la asunción por las aristocracias orientalizantes de la Península Ibérica de una ideología y simbología mítica y religiosa de raigambre oriental en el Hierro Antiguo