Sword scabbard cover
- Inventory number:
- Ар-574
- Author:
- Unknown
- Creation Date:
- 1st century BC - 1st century
- Place of Creation:
- Provenance:
- Institute of Archaeology of National Academy of Science of Ukraine, Excavations near the village Hryniv, Lviv Region, 1975
- Technique:
- repousse
- Size:
- 22 x 6 cm
- Material:
- bronze
- Type of object:
- Sword
- Subject:
- Przeworsk culture
Found in pit No. 3 of the Hryniv burial site. The cover, of an elongated rectangular shape, consists of five small rectangles with images. In the top rectangle, there is an image of a wolf. Below it, a leaping griffin is depicted. In the center, there are two figures—a man and a woman—holding hands and bowing their heads toward each other. The next rectangle shows a ram eating a leaf. The last image features a rider on a horse, holding a spear in his raised right hand and a shield in his lowered left hand. The cover is light brown in color.
In 1975, archaeologist Denys Kozak conducted excavations in the Village of Hryniv of Pustomyty District of Lviv Region. He discovered a burial ground with six burials that were conducted according to the cremation rite. The burials date back to the 1st century AD and belong to the Przeworsk culture, which was prevalent in Poland and western Ukraine from the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD. The richest burial was Burial No. 3, where a complete set of weapons from that period was found: a sword with a scabbard, an umbo (a metal boss of a shield), a spur, two daggers, and a spearhead, indicating the special status of the buried warrior. The weapons had been deliberately damaged. The sword was broken into three pieces, as were the spearhead and daggers; the spur was bent, and the edge of the umbo was flattened. This practice is characteristic of the Przeworsk tribes. Denys Kozak proposed two theories regarding the damage to these items: either the warrior’s weapons were intentionally destroyed after his death so that he could use them in the afterlife, or, conversely, the living wanted to “disarm” the deceased to prevent him from harming them.
The decoration on this cover “tells” us about the cosmological beliefs of that time. The central motif of the entire composition is the hero’s struggle against the forces of chaos, embodying the order of the Universe, the release of life-giving forces, and the fertility of livestock. We see the sacred marriage of the hero-ancestor with the earth goddess in the middle tier. This hero is depicted as a rider in the lower tier.
