Facing Dionysus at Silenus' Banquet in Tokharistan: A Possible Echo of a Greco-Roman Mystic Circle on a Fourth-Fifth Century "Bactrian" Silver Bowl in The al-Sabah Collection (LNS 1560M)
Résumé
The “Bactrian” bowl with reliefs in punch-marked frames, preserved in the al-Sabah collection (LNS
1560 M) was made in Tokharistan, under Chionite or Kidarite rulers (4 th -5 th century). The major figure,
Silenus assimilated to the Indian Kubera, is reclining on a wineskin and exposing his genitals while
drinking from an animal-headed rhyton. Around him, there are eight medallions with three-quarter
busts and profile heads surrounded by rows of sunken beads: the young Dionysos (with features
recalling Alexander the Great) is repeated four times, facing four idealized young or middle-aged
warlords, three of whom wear Satyr masks on the back of their helmets. In our opinion, this bowl is
the first known echo of the Dionysiac mysteries of Roman imperial times in the East. It also attests
the transmission of the 3 rd -century Roman and Sasanian model of vases decorated with medallions
towards Khotan and China, where one still finds ceramic jars with “pearl roundel design” in the 7 th -8 th
centuries AD.